If This Is It
by Skyridercc
Summary: A story about soulmate timers and how they can go wrong, and then the running of how hiccstrid figure things out. rated T (this bit is focussed at a "guest" that called me a scumbag because the mentioning of this being originally created sunnywinterclouds had disappeared in an update or something idk, I am not happy, this IS NOT MY OWN STORY, the original, taken down by the owner)
1. Chapter 1

Hiccup is just three years old when his timer runs out.

The thing about soulmate timers is that they don't register when you meet your soulmate, but when you see them. In an ideal situation, you and your soulmate lock eyes from across a crowded room, then look down at your timers, realize that they've hit zero, and weave your way through the masses of people around you in slow-motion until you're standing in front of one another and seeing the world as if it's new because you've found your true love. It doesn't usually work out like that, though. Half the time you're staring at a huge group of people, nervously glancing down at your timer every other second because it's about to run out, and then suddenly it's hit zero and you're still not sure who you were looking at when it did and you start freaking out because you're afraid you've lost your shot. Most of the time you haven't, but sometimes you never do find whoever it was in the area that you would have fallen for. You don't get a redo. Some people live the rest of their lives with a zeroed out timer and nothing to show for it.

That's the worst thing that can happen to you, really. Some babies are born with zeroed out timers. It's illegal to look at another person's timer without their express permission - they have little covers that you're supposed to put on them and everything - except for the day that you're born. The doctor looks at it to make sure it's not zeroed out, and if it is he goes to your parents with that solemn doctor tone of his and gives them the awful news. It's every parent's worst nightmare, really, because statistics show that over seventy five percent of children born with zeroed out timers end up committing suicide during their late teens or early adulthood. It's hard growing up knowing you'll never find happiness.

Hiccup's never had that problem, though. He's born with his timer reading 3 years, 7 months, 26 days, 8 hours, and 52 seconds. He doesn't know it, but when the doctor takes the mandatory look at his watch he says aloud, "Lucky bastard." He's forty two and still has a year to go before his timer clocks out.

Hiccup really, really likes having a timer so close to being zeroed. His mother doesn't know how close he is, no one but that one doctor does, but she tells him stories about how she met his father and they get him so excited because his parents love each other and that's going to be him one day. He loves the story of how his mom and dad met.

She'd been walking down the street back to her apartment at nine o'clock at night, and her timer had had a minute left. She'd been on the verge of stopping at a grocery store or some other place with potential soulmates when this guy had come out of nowhere and tried to mug her. His mother always laughingly tells him that, for one delirious moment, she'd thought that guy was her soulmate, but as she'd been reaching for her purse for her pepper spray some random redhead with a crazy beard had tackled the guy to the ground. She was so surprised that when her savior got up she shot him in the face with her pepper spray, then spent the next five minutes apologizing and trying ease his stinging eyes by wiping them with tissues (his father always insists that she'd just rubbed it in and made it ten times worse). It wasn't until she'd been blushingly packing up her belongings that they'd looked at each other, then down at their watches, and realized that their timers were zeroed. They'd stood there for a moment, gaping and disbelieving, and then Stoick had asked Valka out for coffee and the rest had been history. ("See, son, a little - okay, fine, dear, a lot - spunk in a woman is what you need!")

Hiccup personally hopes that his own soulmate meeting goes down with a little more smoothness and a lot less pepper spray, but he'll take it any way he can get it. His only problem is that he's three years old and isn't awesome with numbers or attention spans or realizing that on the day of your soulmate timer's final countdown, you're supposed to glance at it every three seconds to make sure you pinpoint the moment when you see your true love. But he's three and naive, and when he wakes up that morning and sees he's got only hours left until he meets her, he's excited but he's not nervous. He doesn't even think about looking down at it again, because she's his soulmate and surely he'll know her when he sees her. That's common sense.

His mother takes him the the park that day. He plays on the jungle gym with a girl named Heather, envies the limber girl on the monkey bars who he's pretty sure is showing off for his benefit, watches a scary blonde girl beat up a guy for stealing her swing, and makes sand castles within the general vicinity of a black-haired girl in overalls. None of them strike a chord with him, so when he clambers into the backseat a few hours later he figures that they'll stop at the store or something soon and he'll meet her there. But then he looks down at his watch and it's zeroed.

It's zeroed.

He immediately starts screaming at his mom to turn around, and he's usually a very quiet and well-tempered kid so she's understandably concerned. Then he starts saying my time is up my time is up over and over and she realizes it, so they drive back even though it's no use. They'd stayed late, and all the girls he'd seen had left before they had. They're long gone, and he's dejected.

Stupid Hiccup.

He hears his parents talking about it in hushed tones that night, and his dad comes in his room after he's tucked in bed to talk to him. His bright red beard looks like fire in the dark, and usually that amuses him but not tonight. He rolls over so that his face is smooshed into his pillow and doesn't say anything.

"Son," his dad starts, then sighs. His dad is an awesome guy, the kind of guy who you can tell loves his family more than anything just by looking at him, but he sucks with words. Like, really sucks. He asked Valka to marry him through a text message. "Son... it's not the end of the world."

"It's zeroed," Hiccup says, his voice muffled by his pillow. He's glad, because then maybe his dad won't be able to tell he's crying. He is a Haddock! Haddocks don't cry.

"Maybe hers isn't. Maybe she'll find you."

"Maybe she won't."

"Hiccup..." He can't see his dad, but he can feel him grasping the air as if that will somehow help him find his words. Hiccup gets that. He does that, too. "I understand... that you're upset. But... your mother and I love you very much, and even if you never find your soulmate - which I'm sure you will, really! - you'll still have us. Always. Son..." He can tell that his dad wants to say more, but the man is so verbally and emotionally constipated that it's really not going to happen. And if it does, it'll be painfully awkward for the both of them.

"It's okay, Dad," he says, and even sort of means it. "It'll turn out okay."

"That's a good man," Stoick says, with an unmistakable air of relief, and leans over the bed to cuff his son on the shoulder. The ow Hiccup mutters is more obligatory than indignant, and maybe his dad realizes it because the giant hand he rests on Hiccup's head is surprisingly gentle. "Don't worry about it, alright?"

"Alright."

"Alright!" He ruffles his son's hair and claps his palms together, then exits the room (but not before knocking over his son's toy box and nearly his dresser). Hiccup thinks he'd have an easier time falling asleep if he couldn't still hear his parents whispering out in the living room about what they seem to have dubbed 'the issue', but he manages it eventually. And then he dreams of blue eyes and a beautiful smile and maybe even some sort of invention that he can use to reprogram his timer and get a second chance.

... ... ...

Hiccup is just ten years old when he takes apart his soulmate timer.

It's not that it's exactly unheard of - there're a few research facilities across the world full of people trying to figure out how the Hel the timers work - it's just... unusual. The timers are gifts from the gods. You are born with a timer, and it is a part of you, and taking it off and examining it is like cutting off one of your fingers. Yeah, people take off their timers to check the back or to look at them more closely, but taking a timer apart is just... well, it's not normal.

But then, Hiccup's never been normal, so he takes it apart. He knows it's controversial and his parents would totally freak out if they saw him doing it, so he locks his door and barricades it with his desk chair as an extra precaution (not that it really matters because his dad could still break it down in his sleep if he wanted to). Then he situates himself comfortably on his bed and, with trembling hands, removes his timer for the first time ever.

It shouldn't be that big of a deal, really. Lots of people take of their timers, but only after they're with their soulmates. Soulmates fill the void that your timer leaves when you take it off, so it's okay. It's kind of a thing, really. People take them off and either put them somewhere for safe keeping or fasten them to a chain and hang them around their necks. Sometimes people with zeroed out timers chuck them into the ocean or some other place where they'll never haunt them with their emptiness again, but that means they've given up hope. Hiccup is different. He hasn't given up hope and he isn't with his soulmate, he's just a ten year old boy who's trying to get his timer to start ticking again.

His timer is a silver watch that's so light he can barely feel it. It's on his left wrist, which is relatively uncommon but not a huge deal, and it's got five different sections - for years, months, days, hours, and seconds. They all read zero. He's going to fix that.

He turns it around and looks at the back. There's nothing there, which disappoints him, because he'd been hoping for some sort of instruction manual for finding his soulmate. Words appear on the back of your soulmate timer when you need them the most, and they stay there forever - Hiccup needs some help right now, like maybe a map or a description or a name. But the words don't work like that.

They're always just sayings, usually from books or plays or even movies. Usually they're general knowledge or vague proverbs, but apparently they always work. Apparently they're foolproof.

Because knowing who your soulmate is doesn't necessarily mean smooth sailing. Stoick and Valka had fought for months after they first met each other (they still do, but it's nicer now), and they really had loved each other already but they also couldn't seem to quite get along. According to Valka, she'd walked out and was storming down the street when her wrist had burned. She'd known it was time, and she'd taken her timer off and read the back and it'd said when love is not madness it is not love and she'd known everything would be alright. And it had been.

He likes his dad's story a bit more, though, because he and Valka had already been married happily for five years when his quote came and all it said was for marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom. Stoick had laughed for hours and followed the advice faithfully ever since, and credits it with the fact that he and Valka are still going strong.

So Hiccup knows his timer is eventually going to say something either profoundly confusing or practically useless, if it ever says anything at all, but that doesn't change the fact that he'd been hoping for something that was remotely helpful. No matter, though, it'll all be fine once he gets his watch counting down again.

Except that he doesn't. He works for hours, feigning a stomach ache to get out of dinner and a school project so that he can stay up late, but he makes absolutely zero progress. He kind of already knew that this would happen, because these things were made by the gods and he's ten and he can't even figure out how to take the back off of the thing, much less access what's inside, but he's upset about it anyway. Maybe if he was stonger like his dad he'd be able to pry it open, or maybe if he was smarter like his uncle Gobber he'd be able to invent something to open it, or maybe if he were lovely like his mother he'd be able to fix it by pleading sweetly with the gods to help him out. He is none of those things. But he is a Haddock, and even though he's smaller and weaker and more useless than most Haddocks he is still a Haddock and Haddocks are stubborn. What he lacks in size and strength and beauty and mind he makes up for with his pure, inherited hard-headedness.

Maybe he can't do anything, really, but he can certainly do... something. And he does. He spends every night from eight o'clock until bedtime tinkering with his timer. He never does manage to open it, but he tries lots of crazy stuff like dipping it in hydrochloric acid in the hopes of corroding it until it falls apart (it's zeroed out anyway, it's not like he has anything to lose) and purposely leaving it out in the road so that a few dozen cars run over it. It doesn't even get a scratch. Say what you will about the gods and godesses, but they sure do know how to craft a watch. None of them work, but he keeps trying. Crowbars, screwdrivers, hammers, wrenches - they all clutter up his desk, making it look more like a workbench for a blacksmith than a preteen's homework station. He keeps trying.

He takes walks to the park a lot. He knows she's his age and probably hasn't gone to this kiddie park in years but she just feels so close and she'd been here within touching distance seven years ago and he'd missed her. He hopes that doesn't haunt him for the rest of his life. He closes his eyes and tries to remember the faces and voices of the girls he'd seen here. He can't. Maybe he's got it all wrong, maybe his soulmate is one of the guys that was at the park. He can't remember them either, and in any case he's fairly sure he likes girls. The boys at school are meaner to him than the girls.

His soulmate probably still lives in town, unless she's moved which he's pretty sure she hasn't because his dad is the mayor and he knows when people move. He'd probably tell Hiccup if a girl moved. Probably. His dad is quite confident that Hiccup's soulmate will come to him, but Hiccup isn't so sure. His dad got a happy ending but a lot of people don't. A lot of people don't find their soulmates, or they lose them or they never had one to begin with or they're stupid like him and don't even realize they've seen them until it's too late. But Hiccup will not give up.

He even writes it on the back of his watch with a sharpie, the only thing he can really do to mark the surface of his timer. Don't give up. He doesn't know what his quote is going to be, if he ever gets one, but that's the one he needs to see every time he feels like it's all hopeless and for naught. Don't give up.

Don't give up.

He will not give up.

... ... ...

Hiccup is just fourteen years old when he gives up.

He feels like a failure and a hypocrite and a stain on the Haddock title but he just can't. He can't keep looking. A wire fuse shorts in their house and there's this fire, and he's in his room staring at his timer and he doesn't even realize the house is burning down until the flames are lapping at his door. It's around eight PM, and his dad is at the office and his mom is out shopping and for a moment he worries that they're going to blame him for burning down the house before he realizes oh, right, he ought to be worried about the house burning down. He slips his watch back onto his left wrist and bolts. His room is on the second floor, too far to jump without serious injury and there's nothing to climb down on, so he takes a deep breath and heads for the hallway. He doesn't remember most of the experience, but he knows that at one point he just wants to slump down against the roasting walls and give into everything but he looks at his timer and the sharpie still says don't give up and so he doesn't.

But he does.

He lives, and really he's quite lucky because he manages to get out with just a little bit of head trauma and, well, a missing left foot, but he genuinely is fine. It's weird for a while, but he gets used to it. It's just a foot. The worst part is his parents, who cry for ages afterwards (particularly his dad, which is equal parts amusing and unnerving) and won't let him out of their sight for more than six minutes at a time. He's settled almost comfortably into his life as a one-footed individual (and every time he says something ridiculous he adds on "whoa, guess I really put my foot in my mouth there" and it's hilarious... to him) when realizes that he only has one foot.

His parents love him because they're his parents and it's... it's their duty. But who could really love a cripple? No, that's ridiculous, of course someone could grow to love a guy with one foot, but... not when that guy's him. He's already got enough going against him, and now he's got a stupid prosthetic leg that makes this annoying clink-tap noise every time he takes a step. And... and when he finds his soulmate, and she sees him, he knows. She's going to stare at him, at his scrawny frame and his missing foot and his freckly, awkward face and think crap. She's going to be so disappointed. She's going to wish her soulmate was someone else.

And... and he can deal with that. If she ever finds him, he can deal with her disappointment. He's used to people being disappointed in him, even if they never say it out loud. But he can't go looking for it. He can't keep actively trying to find someone who's going to at least initially wish he were someone else.

So he gives up. He doesn't give up, because he still vaguely hopes that he'll be with his soulmate one day, but he gives up because he doesn't believe he'll ever find her. And he's okay with that.

Really, he is.

Hiccup sighs, takes off his stupid prosthetic leg, and goes to bed.


	2. Chapter 2

Hiccup is just three years old when he sees his soulmate, just ten when he starts looking for her, and just fourteen when he stops. But he is seventeen years old when he finds her.

 _(these notes were written by sunnywinterclouds)_

 **wow it's been a while since I wrote anything, I love soulmate timer and high school aus and I love httyd and hiccstrid (which this shall obviously be) and I love awkward father/son conversations sooo. I should update fast and astrid may get a pov or ten at some point in the future. this first chapter's style is vastly different from the rest which will be lighthearted and (hopefully) funny. review maybe? keeping in mind that my name is jolly and that the best compliment you could give me is calling my story 'jolly good' thank you xo ps probs lots of errors so point 'em if you see 'em.**

"Watch it, Useless," Snotlout says as he walks past, slamming Hiccup into his own locker like he does every day. Hiccup rolls his eyes and continues on his way to class. He hasn't felt threatened by his cousin in a long time, because everyone knows you don't beat up a cripple. It's kind of a rule. He'd been bullied mercilessly right up until the day of his accident, but then he'd been out of school for six weeks (because recovery takes time) and when he'd reappeared out of nowhere with only one foot, his peers had kept their distance. Now the worst he gets is Snotlout shoving him into things regularly and insulting him in ways that he'd gotten used to back in pre-K. Hel, his universally known nickname is Hiccup, it's not like a few choice adjectives are gonna bring him down.

He really does hate Snotlout, though. First of all, he's his cousin, which means they're supposed to be friends but they're not. Second of all, Snotlout had gotten to choose his own nickname (unlike Hiccup, obviously) and he'd gone with Snotlout. Really. Good job. Third of all, he likes to push Hiccup into things and then say "watch it" which is just annoying because um, hello, he started it. And last but not least, he's got a working timer.

Hiccup knows this, because Snotlout is always bragging about it. Apparently he's going to meet her when he's nineteen, and he's like eight hundred percent positive (that's another thing Hiccup hates about his cousin, he uses impossible percentages) that she's going to be gorgeous and funny and sexually experienced and possibly a movie star. That pisses Hiccup off.

Not Snotlout's expectations, because he supposes it's okay to speculate about what you're soulmate is like, but the fact that Snotlout is a jerk. Like, he's not a horrible person, but he's certainly not very nice and he's so full of himself and he's shallow and disrespectful and kind of mean. And he gets a soulmate. And, yeah, Hiccup is small and awkward and one-legged, but he's still a nice enough guy and he personally feels as if he deserves to meet his true love a little more than his cousin does. Call him selfish, but it's the truth. Stupid Snotlout.

Hiccup supposes he's just glad that it's illegal to look at another person's timer, because Snotlout's always either teasing him about the fact that his is probably zeroed out ("who could love a hiccup?") or expressing mock sympathy for whichever poor girl's gonna end up being stuck with Hiccup as her soulmate. If he - or anyone - knew that he was right, that Hiccup really does have a zeroed out timer (although he wasn't born with it, his soulmate does exist and that's a small comfort), he'd never hear the end of it. He'd be the only known person in the whole school with a timer with ten unmoving zeros.

Well, there is one other person with a zeroed out timer, but she doesn't count. She's Astrid Hofferson, captain of the volleyball team and writing genius and also coincidentally the hottest girl in school, and no one has a doubt in their mind that she'll end up with some equally hot rich guy someday. And they also know she wasn't born with a zeroed out timer. Everyone knows that.

It'd actually hit zero on the first day of kindergarten. Hiccup had been sitting on the floor, absentmindedly watching the stream of students flow in while he'd doodled pictures of dragons and trolls and left socks when a girl had suddenly squeaked. The whole class had looked up at her, and she'd summoned over the teacher and said, in a relatively calm tone, "My timer just ran out."

Just like that, everyone in the room had been all over her, even Mrs. Jackson. Someone finding their soulmate is a huge deal for everyone, and Hiccup was probably the only one who kept his distance, too bitter about his timer being zeroed and too concentrated on the picture he was drawing. He didn't like the way the shading of the dragon's ears was turning out, he'd have to fix that...

Mrs. Jackson had asked Astrid to recount everything that'd happened since she arrived at school, so she did. "I was in the hallway, and there were tons of people, and someone sort of slammed into me and I fell into the class room and I looked around at everyone and then I remembered my timer was almost up and when I looked at it it was done."

"So they could be in this room," Mrs. Jackson had said. "Or out in the hallway."

"It's probably me," Snotlout had chimed in, and had flexed his then-nonexistent arm muscles at Astrid. She'd crinkled her face up in disgust, and Hiccup had decided he liked her.

"Did your timer zero out, too?"

"...no," Snotlout had been forced to admit, and sat back down. Astrid looked relieved.

"Anybody else? Does anybody else have a zeroed out timer?" Both she and Astrid glanced around the room nervously, and Hiccup had quickly gone back to his drawing. His timer may have been zeroed, but it wasn't because of Astrid. He'd just look stupid if he'd put his hand up then.

Although...

Eventually their teacher seemed to realize that she'd been thrown totally off-track, so she'd dropped the issue and arranged a bunch of pillows on the floor in the shape of a circle. Once everyone had sat down, Hiccup whispered a pssst at Astrid. She'd given him a quick once-over, then moved a couple pillows over to sit next to him, and he'd whispered, "I have a zeroed out timer too."

Astrid had looked him over again and winced. "So... you're my soulmate?"

"Oh, no, mine zeroed out a while ago," he'd told her, and had tried to ignore the look of relief that passed over her features. "I just thought, you know... we're both not sure who we saw. So we could look for them together."

"Um, thanks," Astrid had said, looking at him with the mild distaste of a beautiful person observing a... well, a Hiccup. "But I'm sure my soulmate's close by, I can find him myself."

Oh. "But what if he -"

"Look, I get why you'd need to worry about this kind of thing, but I'm... different. Trust me, it'll be fine."

"Okay," he'd said quietly, and watched as she'd crawled away back to her original position. He hasn't spoken to her since.

He knows that she was wrong, though. Everyone knows that Astrid hasn't managed to find her soulmate yet, because everyone knows exactly what Astrid's soulmate is going to be like. Smart. Attractive. Athletic. Popular. A couple of guys in school fit the bill, but none of them have zeroed out timers and so Astrid doesn't spare them a second glance. A lot of students date people who they know aren't their soulmates, for the experience or the memories or sometimes just the sex, but not Astrid. Astrid is a perfectionist, and anyone who isn't her soulmate isn't her perfect match and therefore isn't worth her time.

Everyone kind of wonders where her soulmate went, and as Hiccup sits down at his desk and gets out his sketchpad and a pencil, he is no exception. He wonders. Like, he'd seen his soulmate at the park, and everyone had left in a wide variety of directions and had never completely come together again and so it had been easy to see how Hiccup had never managed to discern who his soulmate had been out of the bunch of them. Astrid, on the other hand, had seen her soulmate at school, where everyone came to regularly five days out of the week and where everyone was in relatively close proximity with one another. The student body's current theory is that an older kid, maybe one in middle school or something, had been leading a younger sibling to their class on the first day and had left and had never come back and was now off at some college somewhere that Astrid might meet him at someday if she were lucky (which she was). Another rather-less-popular idea is that an adult had been at the kindergarten and he'd been Astrid's soulmate (the largest soulmate age difference on record is about thirty years, so it's plausible), but most people figure that Astrid's match is going to be perfect and an age difference like that... isn't perfect. Everyone knows Astrid is all about perfect.

Now, Hiccup likes Astrid well enough (she's kept her knowledge about his zeroed out timer on the down-low, which he really appreciates), but he's not sure if he totally agrees with her perfectionist idealisms. Like, what makes someone perfect, anyway? What makes a perfect match? Apparently your soulmate is perfect for you, and the only person you can find real, total, complete happiness with, but Hiccup hopes that isn't really the case. The chances of finding his soulmate after having a timer that's been zeroed out for nearly fifteen years are pretty slim (and downright impossible if his soulmate's timer is zeroed, too, because they can guess but how will they ever know?), and he's got no idea who or what to look for. Astrid just has to watch for a guy who seems too flawless to be true, but what's he supposed to do? Keep an eye out for a girl with a missing right foot? You know, so that they make a pair?

Speaking of missing feet, Hiccup's drawing of Toothless isn't going too awesome. He'd finally grown out of the stage where he'd drawn mythical and magical creatures all day long (except for the dragons, but that's a secret) and has moved mostly onto real-life objects and his inventions. Right now he's going back and forth between a picture of his cat - which is horribly disproportionate, his head's not nearly that big - and his own prosthetic, which he's been secretly making adjustments to for the last three months. He's finally hitting his grown spurt, which is great, but he despises having to go to hospital every other day to get his leg fitted when he's perfectly capable of doing it himself. His parents would kill him if they found out, though ("our insurance doesn't cover any leg-damage that's been caused by your tinkering, Hiccup!"), so he tends to only mess with his designs when he's in school and he slouches whenever he's around his mom. (His dad is so tall that Hiccup could grow another ten inches before he'd have to worry about him noticing.)

The bell rings, though, and school is one of the only things that Hiccup is good at so he slips his sketchbook into his backpack and replaces it with his science notebook. Hiccup likes science. He likes having real and plausible explanations for things; he likes being able to rationalize the world and he likes being able to rely on certain truths. He likes reason, which is probably why the whole soulmate-timer thing gets him so worked up. None of that crap even makes sense.

Science, though… science, he can do. He takes notes on the lesson and briefly doodles a tiny little dragon on the bottom left corner of his paper. It looks more like a winged salamander than anything else, if he's being honest with himself, so he adds tiny little curled horns to each side of his head in order to make the distinction and then dubs it a brand new dragon species. He decides to call it the Terrible Terror (not because it's scary but because it looks so bad) and makes a mental note to come up with some stats for it and add it to his Book of Dragons (which has been in the works since preschool) when he gets home. Honestly, he keeps having to staple new pages into that thing, it's getting too big to hide under his bed…

He spends the next half hour alternately paying attention and working on his new dragon (cat-sized, attack eight venom twelve), and the bell's only a few minutes from ringing and sending them all off to their next class when Ms. Woodward says, "Okay, listen up, class, because this is important."

Hiccup is successfully snapped out of his geek-fantasies, and automatically moves his hand to cover up his miniscule dragon sketch. If anyone (Snotlout) found out about his dragon thing, he'd be totally dead. His old friend Fishlegs had known about his little (big) obsession when they were younger and had even helped out with the Book of Dragons for a while, but that was in elementary school and Hiccup's pretty sure working on a giant, illustrated novel about mythical flying reptiles isn't cool anymore. Not that it was ever cool in the first place, but whatever.

"Over the next six weeks, I want you all to complete a project," Ms. Woodward continues, and the entire class groans, even Hiccup. Usually he's all up for a lengthy, research-required assignment (unless he has to present it, he's great with powerpoints but horrible with public speaking), but this is not a good time for him. He's taking two advanced math classes at the local community college, one extremely long Driver's Ed course for teens with disabilities (apparently driving with a prosthetic foot requires extra caution, although he does get to use handicapped parking spaces which is awesome), one online engineering course just for the heck of it, and almost all honors classes at his regular high school. Add that to the fact that he's up pretty much every night either messing with his leg or drawing Toothless as a dragon and you can see why he's not too thrilled about another project being added to his workload.

He's just glad he doesn't have a social life. Or friends. Or extracurricular activities. Or any real hobbies. It all leaves him a lot of time for schoolwork, yay.

"A partnered project," their teacher is saying, and the entire class perks up a little, "…for which you will be paired together alphabetically." Everyone groans again.

Hiccup is just enormously glad that this is an honors course, because that means Snotlout isn't in it and they won't be put together for both having name Haddock. He listens vaguely for his name to be read out as he discreetly moves his hand away from his paper and adds a little wart to the middle of the Terrible Terror's nose. Ooh, that looks good, maybe he'll turn it into an upright horn…

"Hayden Haddock," his teacher finally says, and he glances up a bit but doesn't stop drawing, "…and Astrid Hofferson."

Snap. Hiccup presses down too hard against his desk and his pencil lead breaks in half, poking a hole through his paper and leaving a giant mark on his drawing. He sighs, because he always likes to keep his initial sketch of a dragon for reference if nothing else, no matter how bad it is, and this little doodle is totally ruined. Why had he… oh, right. Because of Astrid. Astrid Hofferson.

He sits at the back of the class ("all the better to not be noticed," as he tells Toothless), so he freely stares at the back of Astrid's shiny blonde head for a little while without anyone catching him. Astrid Hofferson. He should have seen this coming, they're the only two in the class with last names that start with an H, but Astrid is so otherworldly that he's never even really acknowledged the fact that she gets paired with people for projects. Doesn't she just have to flip her hair at a teacher or something to get out of the assignment all-together?

Maybe Astrid feels his stare on her, or maybe she just hates him for having a last name that starts with the same initial at hers, but in any case she turns around and shoots him a quick glare before concentrating on the teacher once again. Hiccup isn't sure why, because Ms. Woodward is still just reading out names in alphabetical order and it's not exactly interesting, so he sighs and lets his head clunk down against his desk. Why couldn't he have gotten Fishlegs? They're not exactly friends anymore, but they've never been rude to each other and they definitely work well together and Ingerman is so close to Haddock, if only Astrid had been out sick for the day…

Hiccup isn't sure why exactly he's so averse to being paired up with Astrid, half the guys in school would kill for it, but she's so… well, she's a perfectionist. She's going to want their project to be absolutely polished and organized and well-thought out, and as great at Hiccup is at school he's not exactly the most task-focused person. He tends to put off doing his assignments until the last day or two before they're due, then write the thing out in a totally scatterbrained, all-over-the-place fashion in about ten minutes before spending the next couple of hours cleaning it up. That's his process, and it works for great him if his perfect GPA is anything to go by, but he gets the feeling that Astrid's not going to let him get away with that. They're going to work on this project 24/7 for the next six weeks and it's going to end up being as flawless as her complexion.

"Okay," Ms. Woodward says, as she calls out the last name and looks around to make sure no one's been left partnerless. "Now, I want you to come up in pairs and take a slip of paper for your project topic as you leave, got it?" Hiccup waits for the swarm of students to get ahead of him before stepping out into the aisle between the desks, and by the time he gets to the front of the class Astrid is already reading their sheet of paper.

He peers over her shoulder to see what it says, careful to not touch or even breathe on her, and groans when he sees the words carbon dating – method, conception, and practice. Not because he has anything against carbon dating, carbon dating is cool, but this sets him up for so many science pickup lines that he'll never be able to use without Astrid punching him the face! The topic literally has the word dating in it, the only way this could have fallen into his lap more perfectly would be if they were in a chemistry class and he could make obligatory we-have-chemistry jokes.

See, if this were any other girl (or even Fishlegs) he'd be totally comfortable making lighthearted science flirtation, because he's so generally awkward that they wouldn't take him seriously, but Astrid would. She gets guys hitting on her all the time, even though they know it's never gonna happen, and he can imagine the sneering look she'd get on her face if he even jokingly made a move on her. Geez, he's not stupid, he knows she's never going to like him, but he really really wants to use those science pickup lines. Really.

"So," Astrid says, and he bites back an are you a carbon sample? 'cause I want to date you line, "when do you want to get started?"

"Um. Whenever." Don't. Don't say it… she'll punch you, don't say it… you saw her break Snotlout's arm that one time he grabbed her ass, this won't end well for you, don't say it…

"How's today? After school."

He knew it, he knew she was going to do this to him, he knew she was going to want them to get started on this right away. Gods, and he'd wanted so bad work on the Book of Dragons and study some more for his driver's license test (he is seventeen and he can't believe he still hasn't gotten around to it yet). And he doesn't want to do any real school today, he's tired, he was up all night finishing his college Calculus homework. He can see Toothless already, warming up his bed and getting black fur all over his sheets and practically begging him to take off his leg and come cuddle with him. He'd be more than happy to oblige.

"Sounds good," he says anyway, and the image of Toothless flickers from his mind. "My place or yours?"

He immediately winces, because that came out soundly mildly suggestive and he'd already got one missing limb, but Astrid either doesn't notice or doesn't care. He's being ridiculous; she's testy, not crazed. "Mine, this time, but we should probably alternate. Here, I'll write down my address…"

She does, as well as her phone number. He, Hayden Haddock, has Astrid Hofferson's phone number. He'll probably never call it, just text her to set up dates and times or talk about their project, but still! Her phone number! It's a big deal for him, which is kind of sad.

"You can follow me home, if you'd like," she says. "You have a car, right?"

Ah, there it is. His lack of a driver's license coming back to bite him in the ass, just like he always knew it would. "Oh, uh, I walk."

"Really?" she says, and he doesn't miss the way her eyes flicker down to his leg. She's subtle, but he's gotten really good at catching it. "That's… um, nice."

"Yeah." The truth is, he'd started walking to and from school because of his leg. He'd always used to take the bus or have one of his parents drop him off on their way to work, but after he'd started having trouble walking he'd become determined to walk everywhere. It'd been painful and slow and agonizingly tedious at first, but now it's been three years since he'd lost his leg and he's just as easy on his feet as he'd been before the incident. More so, actually, because physical therapy had managed to knock a bit of the clumsiness out of him and had even instilled some of the basic coordination that he'd always lacked previously. Who says losing a leg doesn't have perks?

"Do you… want to ride with me to my place?" she asks, looking like the offer doesn't even pain her too much, and Hiccup decides she's pretty nice as long as he refrains from hitting on her with science puns. "It's pretty far, it'd take you a while to walk and I want to get started right away…"

"That's cool with me," he tells her honestly, even though he'd still rather be giving Toothless a belly rub (which cats aren't supposed to like but Toothless is an idiot so) or nerding it up with his dragon book. "I don't have my laptop, though, you'll have to email me whatever work we do."

"I'm not sure if we'll get that far, but okay." She cocks her head at him. "Aren't you going to… you know, give me your number?"

Astrid Hofferson is asking him for his number; it'd be funny if it wasn't so surreal. "Oh, um, I'll just… text you," he offers lamely, and she nods her approval. She looks like she's about to say something else when the warning bell rings, and she adjusts her backpack so that it's pulled more firmly around her shoulders.

"I guess I'll see you after class, then. Meet me by the vending machines?"

"Soda or snack?"

"They're… right next to each other, Hiccup."

"Oh. Oh, right." See, this is why he doesn't talk to people. Toothless is going to cat-laugh so hard at him for this when he tells him about it later… "Then, um, see you then."

"Bye," Astrid says before leaving, smiling in a way that's faintly amused by his awkwardness. He doesn't think he's ever seen Astrid smile in close proximity to him before, or maybe even at all, and it's enough to leave him lightheaded and staring at a wall until the late bell rings. Ah, crap.

Maybe he'll leave out everything but the smiling part for Toothless.

 **yup that's right I'm going for the overly-cliché project pairing of the love characters for this story. it's really just a high school au with soulmate timers so that I can pretend it has a plotline, sorry if you thought differently xo**


	3. Chapter 3

Hiccup's last class gets out a little early, so he waits calmly by the vending machines for approximately half a second before he starts pacing.

He's going to get in Astrid's car, he's going to go to Astrid's house, he's going to hang out with Astrid regularly for the next six weeks of his life. Yeah, it's school, and yeah, it's forced, but it's still Astrid and him in the same vicinity most afternoons for over a month, interacting and communicating and being around one another. It's… nightmarish? Or awesome? Or both?

He attempts to stop himself from freaking out by taking his cell phone out and texting his dad that he'll be home late. Maybe two minutes later he gets a text back that reads okasy seeed yoiu at dinnwr sonf, and he snorts. His dad's fingers are way too big for the tiny Smartphone keypad he has.

"Hey," Astrid suddenly says from behind him, and it's so mild and civil that he actually drops his phone. He stoops over to pick it up, thanking all of the gods above that the screen's not cracked, before turning to face her with flushed cheeks.

"H-hey." Her left eyebrow is raised and she's got her right hand resting lightly on the strap of backpack, which is slung around one shoulder. Her timer hangs off her wrist loosely, and it's such a bright gold that he hides his own dull silver one behind his back out of something like embarrassment.

"You ready to head out, then?" she asks. Her eyebrow is still up, and he silently wills it to resume its rightful place slightly above her eye.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, of course." She jerks her head in a this way motion before heading off towards the parking lot, and he waits just a few moments before following her so that they don't end up walking too close to each other. Something about the thought of he and Astrid walking together makes him almost drop his phone again.

They make their way through the parking lot, her at a brisk, even pace and him with his usual lopsided clink-tap pattern. Even after walking to and from school every day, he's a little slow, but if Astrid is annoyed she doesn't show it. He appreciates that.

"Here we are," she says, and stops at a blue and newish looking car. It's average, but Hiccup's dad has a jeep so he loves it for the normalcy.

"Awesome," he says, and automatically ducks down to look at her wheels. Lack of tire traction is one of the leading causes of traffic accidents among 16 to 21 year olds, behind distracted driving and the influence of alcohol/drugs, and besides he's been working on his designs for this hypothetical convertible he wants to make one day and he can't quite figure out how to properly correlate the height of the wheels with the level that he wants to –

"Hiccup?" Astrid says, and he stands up so fast that he manages to hit his head on the side of the car. That shouldn't have even been possible, as he shot up at an almost completely vertical angle with the car perfectly parallel to him, but then again he's Hiccup so it makes a sad amount of sense. Things like hurting him.

"Sorry," he says, with his hand pressed to his injury. It's definitely not bleeding, but it will probably bruise.

"You okay?" Astrid asks, even though she looks like she's on the verge of bursting out laughing. He nods, then groans when it makes his head hurt.

"Gah, I'm – fine, I'm fine. As is your paint job, so. Yeah. Good. Go? I mean, should we go?" He can't quite manage to hold back the embarrassed grimace that's been struggling to get out, and Astrid looks far too amused by him for comfort. Somehow this had gone differently in his head, with Astrid laughing with him rather than at him, but he also sort of believes in dragons so obviously all of his daydreams are pretty farfetched.

Astrid nods and unlocks her door, then leans over the console to unlock the passenger's side as well. He fumbles with the handle of the door only twice before he gets it, a new personal best for him while in the presence of a pretty girl, and has to adjust the seat backwards a bit before he can sit in it because there's not even enough leg room for a guy with one leg. The seat gets stuck from lack of use or something before he can adjust it more than a few inches, though, and he's forced to make do with maybe half a foot space between himself and the dashboard.

"Sorry, I don't usually have other people in the car," Astrid says, and it hits him that she's as much of a loner as he is. She's not an outcast, she strays away from the high school populace by choice rather than force, but she's still just as socially single as himself and that makes her… less threatening. More relatable. Realer. She's not just some popular, ridiculously hot chick who exists only at school and makes him nervous enough to hit his head on the side of cars; she's a human being. It's… oddly freeing, and suddenly he feels a Hel of a lot more relaxed around her than he'd been two seconds ago. Not relaxed enough to put his feet –foot? – up on the dashboard like he always does when he's in his mom's car, but relaxed enough.

"No prob," he tells her, and restrains himself from offering to put his prosthetic in the glove box to make more room. That'd make her uncomfortable. He's still learning how to drive, so he watches her carefully as she pulls out of the parking space (and, again, restrains himself from making a bad joke along the lines of if you ever forget how to pull out of a parking spot, use your backup plan because she might crash the car just to end her suffering).

Astrid doesn't say a word or take her eyes of the road even once on the whole drive to her house, and he wonders if it's because she's a really focused driver or because she's purposely ignoring him. He hopes it's the former.

"This is it," Astrid says suddenly, pulling up in front of a medium-sized house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It's… wow. White picket fence, red door, bright green lawn – it's the perfect representation of the ideal American home. Hiccup wouldn't be surprised if Astrid's parents really did have exactly 2.5 kids.

"Well, come on," Astrid says, after a moment of silence. He unbuckles his seatbelt (I couldn't remember how to fasten my seatbelt, but then it clicked, aha yes oh that one is good), gets out of the car, and follows Astrid's lead towards the front door.

The inside of her house is just as picturesque as her front yard. They've got hardwood floors, spotless kitchen counters, and photographs of their family all up and down the entrance hallway. Astrid sits him down at the dining room table and says, "Wait here, I've got to get my laptop."

Of course, the second she's gone Hiccup gets up to explore. Well, he's not really exploring, he just wants to look at some pictures of Astrid and her family. Not in a weird or stalker-ish way, really; he's being purely observational. As much as he adores (like, adores) his parents, they're just a tad dysfunctional, and Astrid's family is so outwardly perfect that he'd just like to get a quick glance of them together. There's nothing creepy about that, is there?

He tiptoes (okay, clink-taps) back to the entrance hallway and stares at all the photos there. Astrid's got an older brother, apparently, who must be off at college, but it's her parents who really catch his attention.

They're really… well, they're really similar. They've both got bright blonde hair (like Astrid's), deep blue eyes (like Astrid's), athletic builds (like Astrid's), and golden timers (like Astrid's). He'd probably have mistaken them for brother and sister had they not been looking at each other in a gooey, sickening way and linking hands with wrists decorated by watches that were both clearly zeroed.

They… Astrid's parents could be on the cover of soulmate magazines. They're exactly what most people think ideal soulmates are like – similar. You and your soulmate are two halves of the same whole (two halves of the same soul, to be specific), so it goes to reason that your true love is going to be just like you in a lot of ways. That's what a lot of people want in a soulmate. That's what a lot of people expect in a soulmate.

Hiccup disagrees. He's not exactly in favor of the opposites attract approach to the topic either, because that just feels like another extreme and he's not sure if he could ever end up with someone who, say, hated cats with a burning fiery passion. But he's equally uncertain about whether or not he'd be able to handle a girl as equally nerdy and awkward and inept as himself, even if it'd be awesome to have someone to spaz about dragons with. He just… doesn't like himself very much, but he still wants his soulmate to have a couple of his attributes like honesty and some mild intelligence and… neither of those two options would work for him, is what he's trying to say. He needs someone in-between. He wants his hypothetical, probably-lost-forever soulmate to be enough like him for them to get along but unique enough to be interesting. It's different for everyone – Astrid's parents are clearly the practically-identical type of soulmate – but he knows he's going to fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum if he ever falls anywhere at all.

"They even have the same birthday," Astrid suddenly says from beside him, and he whirls around so fast that he almost falls over. She helps to steady him (Astrid touching body nnngh) before continuing. "Actually, they were born at the same hospital, if you can believe it. Apparently the doctor was checking my mom's watch and it read twelve seconds and he got all freaked out about it for a moment but then a nurse brought in another baby and… it was pretty obvious. He told my grandparents about it and my mom and dad were kind of… together right away. They got married the day they turned eighteen."

"Wow," Hiccup says, looking at Astrid, and the way she's staring at the portrait of her parents is… revealing. Clearly she wants that. Clearly she believes in that kind of soulmate perfection; clearly she likes her mom and dad's story and desires the love that they have. He can't really relate, as his parents are definitely closer to the opposites-attract side of soulmatism, but he still sort of gets it.

"So," he breaks the silence with, and Astrid jerks her head like she's snapping out of a fog or something. "We should probably get started. On the project." Which he'd totally forgotten about, like, hours ago, but he doesn't mention that part.

"Right," Astrid says, looking a little awkward herself, and freezes as he brushes his hair out of his eyes nervously. He doesn't get why it's such a big deal at first, because she's got overly long bangs that she's always messing with, but then she grabs his wrist in her hand and he gets it.

"You have words on the back of your timer?" she asks, eyes wide, clearly having spotted the black sharpie there. He fights to form coherent words through the fact that her fingers clutching at his arm. He loses.

"Uh-mr-gnnff…" Great, he's almost as literate as his dad's texts now. Astrid doesn't seem to notice.

"Does that mean… you know? That you've found your soulmate?" He wrenches his hand out of her death grip and breathes again.

"What would make you think that?"

"Don't the words always appear after you find your soulmate or whatever?"

"Not necessarily. They appear when you most need them or something stupid like that, remember?" He doesn't mean to sound quite so cynical, but the thought of the gods graciously sending down a message of love and wisdom and a bunch of other bullshit because they sense that you need it is just… dumb. Astrid, to his surprise, nods her agreement.

"Yeah, I've heard that. But isn't that always after you've found your soulmate?"

"…pretty much, yeah."

"So you have found her?"

"Honestly, Astrid, do you really think I'm going to find my soulmate before you do?" he questions, and realizes almost immediately that that's exactly what she'd been afraid of. If Hiccup Haddock, nicknamed Useless on the second day of preschool and so socially challenged that it's painful, finds his soulmate before she does, then there must be something wrong with her. He'd object to the reasoning, except… he kind of agrees. Damn.

"It's possible," she says, but she looks relieved. "So… so why are there words there?"

"That's really none of your business," he intones shortly. Who would've thought he'd have the nerve to shoot down Astrid Hofferson? The look she gives him is anything but mollified, though, and before he knows it she's pinned him to the wall by his timer-clad arm and is wrestling it off of him. The timer, not his arm, although she doesn't seem like she'll lose any sleep over taking that off, too. This frightens him.

"Astrid!" he says, his voice higher pitched than usual half because she's touching him all over and half because he's absolutely scandalized. "You can't look at my timer, that's illegal!"

Astrid rolls her eyes as she tugs at his watch, which he tries to reclaim even though it's futile. "It's only illegal to look at the countdown, and you told me it was zeroed back in kindergarten anyway. Hold still," she snaps, as he continues to struggle. He fights against her grip for only a second longer before she twists his arm in a very threatening way and he goes limp with defeat.

"Don't give up," she reads aloud off of it, and frowns. "What does that mean? And what… is this marker? Did you write this yourself? Scratch that, why did you write this yourself?"

"Great questions," he says, reaching to take his watch back and feeling overwhelmed with relief when she lets him have it – because as much as he hates his soulmate timer sometimes, he feels totally naked without it on. "All of which are also none of your business."

"Hiccup…" Astrid says, in the kind of voice that clearly means I-don't-have-time-for-your-bullshit. He knows this because it's the exact same tone she uses on Snotlout whenever he's hitting on her.

"Look, Astrid," he says, suddenly very tired. "Just… drop it, okay? Please, it's… personal. Very personal." The thought of telling Astrid about the relentless search for his soulmate that he'd participated in for four years before it had ended with bitter defeat and the loss of his left foot is somehow not appealing.

Astrid gives him a weird look before nodding jerkily at him. "Fine. Well. School, then."

"Thanks," he says, as he follows her back to the dining room, wishing he'd never left it in the first place. Now she knows he's a total freak instead of just being pretty sure. Oh, well, she was bound to figure it out eventually; Astrid is pretty smart, in case that wasn't already painfully obvious.

"So," Astrid says, as she performs the extremely impressive task of typing 'carbon dating' into Google, "apparently our project is about 'the determination of the age of an organic object from the relative proportions of the carbon isotopes carbon-12 and carbon-14 that it contains.'" He groans. That sounds… boring.

"I saw Fishlegs and his partner get assigned all the inner transition elements, why couldn't we get something like that?"

"This is more interesting," Astrid defends. At the disbelieving look on his face, she adds, "Okay, maybe not, but it won't take as long. There are 28 inner transition elements and only one method of carbon dating." He's mildly (okay, more than mildly) impressed with the fact that she knows how many inner transition elements there are off the top of her head. She would have rocked that project.

"Elements are more fun, though," he whines, and then accidentally says, "We even could've gotten fluorine, uranium, and nitrogen."

Astrid stares at him. "Two of those are representative elements with different amounts of outer-shell electrons and the other is an inner transition element. Why on earth would we be assigned those specifics ones together?"

"Oh, uh," Hiccup says, his face bright red because he had not meant to voice that pathetic joke out loud, "I was just… you know… talking to myself… because those are my – my favorite elements…"

"Fluorine, uranium, and nitrogen are your favorite elements," Astrid deadpans. He frowns, because deadpanning is his thing.

"…yes."

"So what you're saying is –"

"They spell out fun, okay?" he cuts her off, because he's decided that his cover story is probably more embarrassing than his original intent. "The symbols for fluorine, uranium, and nitrogen spell out fun which is a terrible joke and I apologize so let's actually start our project now before I say anything else intended to be funny but in all actuality is really stupid okay?" He opens up his backpack and pulls out his sketchpad before she can actually respond, then starts drawing a landscape scattered with flowers.

"I'm going to work on the cover for our presentation for a bit," he tells her. "You choose a format… if you want to." He is nothing if not assertive.

"Okay," Astrid says. He's already halfway through his super-cool tyrannosaurus rex (which he's drawing to emphasize the time period and not because it's just so cool) when he hears Astrid mutter something under her breath that sounds a lot like nitrogen erbium dysprosium.

Hiccup's pencil lead snaps and bores a hole through his picture for the second time that day. It's still because of Astrid.

"Did you just… did you just call me nerdy using periodic table elements?"

"Of course not," Astrid says, her far eyes too wide and innocent for her to be telling the truth.

"You… you said nitrogen, erbium, dysprosium. N, Er, Dy. You just… you just called me nerdy."

"Did not," Astrid replies. Her eyes are still the size of dinner plates.

"That is so hypocritical of you," he says, throwing his useless pencil down onto the table in indignation. "You literally just called me a nerd in the nerdiest way possible!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Hiccup, but if I had called you a nerd in periodic table elements it wouldn't have been nerdy because you started it and I was merely acting in retaliation. Hypothetically. Is that a T-Rex?" She tugs his sketchbook away from him, and he's so blank with shock that he lets her take it.

"You – but you – you're a geek – and – you –"

"How exactly are a bunch of tulips and a dinosaur meant to represent carbon dating?"

He manages to get his tongue back in working order for the sake of defending his drawing. "It's not done yet, it's going to show flowers undergoing photosynthesis because their absorption of carbon dioxide is what makes carbon dating applicable to them. And the dinosaur's there because it shows that it took place millions of years ago." Not because t-rexes are just that cool. Hiccup decides he's totally going to draw a tyrannosaurus with wings and call it a dragon when he gets home.

Astrid is silent for a moment, then says, "You're really good. At drawing. But not science jokes." She moves to flip the page, but he reaches forward and snatches his book back before she can. She'd just given him a compliment, the last thing he needs is her discovering his plethora of dragon sketches and calling him nitrogen-erbium-dysprosium again.

"Thank you," he says. "You're really good at everything else."

"Yeah," Astrid says modestly, and he rolls his eyes as he reaches into his backpack for his pencil sharpener. "But you should still probably do the power point part of the project. You can use some of your drawings and make some diagrams and stuff. I'll do the writing, and we can share the research and public speaking."

Public speaking. "Okay, sure, but I'm not exactly the most verbally eloquent person in the world."

"You're doing fine right now, just imagine the audience is naked or something." He accidently imagines Astrid naked just then and snaps his pencil lead in half for the third time in as many hours. Siiiigh.

"Right. Sure. Can do." He sharpens his pencil again and slowly writes down yttrium oxygen uranium sulfur uranium carbon potassium on a blank sheet of paper, just to see if he can get her to comment on it. She does.

"Hey, shut up," she says, after deciphering his remarkably clever and unique insult (you suck). At his accusing look, she adds, "Okay, fine, I read periodic table abbreviations."

"You speak periodic table abbreviations."

"Yes, okay, but mine was clever and yours was seriously lame. Really, fun, it's no wonder I didn't get it at first."

"It's not my fault all the good science jokes argon," he says, forgetting that she's gorgeous and popular and athletic for a moment. She's just as big of a nerd as he is, albeit way better at pulling it off than him, and when she throws her pencil at his head he laughs instead of feeling offended.

They spend the next hour and a half trading horrible science jokes ("I was gonna tell you this joke about salt but I decided Na, that'd be so-dium" "no wonder you run out of science jokes so fast, you've got to spread them out periodically") and doing a bunch of school. Well… some school. He starts and finishes a new drawing of a dinosaur, but it's actually just a t-rex attempting to do pushups for Astrid's amusement so he's not sure if he's allowed to call it progress. It takes one look at Astrid's grin when she sees it for Hiccup to decide yep, it's definitely progress, just not of the academic variety.

They do complete the outline and the basic structure of their project, though, and the next time he checks his phone it's 5:38. Dinner's at six, like always, and he sends a quick prayer to the gods that his mom isn't cooking before telling Astrid he has to go.

"Oh," she says, and maybe looks just a tiny bit disappointed. "Alright, then, do you need a ride home?"

"If it's not too much trouble." He packs up his stuff and follows her out the door, and notices on the way home that she's maybe not as good of a driver as she'd been before.

Progress.

"See you tomorrow," he tells her before clink-tapping his way up to his front door, and when he curls up with Toothless that night he sleeps better than he has since he was three years old.

 **right so I'm bad at writing astrid if that's not apparent enough but hey I figure if she didn't have an axe to swing she'd be really into academics and besides I'm so nerdy that all my characters become nerdy too. p.s. is it sad that I did like zero research for all the science jargon up there yes it is**

 **next chapter is called 'toothless should be put up for adoption' so… it could literally be about anything… and the one after that will probs be in astrid's pov if I can get the hang of it**


	4. Chapter 4

"So then I said 'come on, Astrid, I just told you a chemistry joke, give me a reaction,' and then she said 'oxygen magnesi–' are you even listening to me?"

Toothless looks up from licking his ass and gives Hiccup a stare that clearly reads are you kidding me right now of course I'm not. (hey or more like 'are you kitten me right meow' ahaha get it because Toothless is a cat? Okay well Astrid would have liked it… maybe)

"Come on, Toothless, pay attention. I bonded with a pretty girl and it's important!" Toothless responds by folding up into a tight ball on the bed and putting his paws over his ears. He puts his paws over his ears.

Hiccup stomps over to his cat and picks him up so that he can look him in the eye. "Toothless, I am your owner and therefore I am in charge so you'd better care about my social life or so help the gods I will – I will – I will switch your kibble to 9 Lives."

That catches Toothless's attention. "That's right, buddy, no more ridiculously expensive Orijen Grain-Free 6 Fresh Fish for you. From here on out it's all hard food that hurts your teeth and has corn listed as the first ingredient and causes kidney failure in cats aged 8 to –"

Toothless yowls. Hiccup puts him down.

"You ready to pretend to listen to what I have to say, then?" Toothless hops up onto the bed and puts his head on his paws, clearly sulking, then perks his ears up in this exaggerated way that feels kind of like a middle finger. Hiccup flops down next to him, and Toothless immediately moves closer because he doesn't fully grasp the concept of fighting.

"Thanks, bud," Hiccup says, running a hand down Toothless's back as he curls up on his chest. His cat is very cuddly. "Now, where was I…"

He's had Toothless for just over three years now, since the… well. Since the foot-thing. He'd been understandably depressed over the whole ordeal, as one minute he'd been awkward but average the next he'd been one-legged and helpless, and the knowledge that he'd struggle with having a missing foot for the rest of his life had been hard. On top of that, all of his belongings had burned to a crisp, including his original dragon manual, and he'd suddenly had this feeling that he'd never ever find his soulmate and it'd caused this burden of hopelessness to be thrust upon his shoulders with a weight he'd never felt before.

He'd always wanted a pet for the company, because he'd been lonely all his life, but suddenly he needed a real friend so badly that it felt like he might explode without one. The day he came home from the hospital he'd asked his parents for at least a fish for what had to have been the six thousandth time in his life, except that that time they'd said yes.

Hiccup's mom always insists that he'd been using the loss of his leg as a woe-is-me move to manipulate his parents into buying him a pet, but that's not true at all. He'd just wanted some company… and if his parents had felt so guilty and worried over his despondency that they'd been practically obligated to cave in and get him a cat, well, that's purely coincidental.

In any case, they'd driven him to the pet store that evening and promised they wouldn't leave until he'd found something fluffy to call his own. His dad had immediately started trying to sell him on the giant Labradors in the corner, until he'd overheard Valka trying to get a parakeet to say 'Stoick is a dumbass'. Things went downhill from there.

With both his parents successfully distracted (he hadn't even had to employ his knock-over-shelves-like-dominoes strategy, which was lucky because he did that in Walmart once and it didn't go well), Hiccup had slipped away to the back of the shop. That was where they kept the outcast cats (outcats! No? okay) who would probably get put down because they were vicious or ugly or old, so of course they were the ones who Hiccup felt like he would relate to the most.

Apart from some serious sympathy and this horrible tugging on his heartstrings that made him want to take every single kitty home with him, Hiccup hadn't felt anything special for a cat until he'd reached the end of the room. There'd been this tiny black ball of fur in a cage that started hissing and spitting at him the second he'd gotten close, and he'd been about to move on when he'd spotted it. Three legs.

The cat was missing a leg.

Well, it hadn't really been his decision after that, now, had it? Guy has missing leg, guy meets cat with missing leg, guy adopts cat and they live happily ever after. It's practically every love story ever told… sort of. In any case, he'd had no choice but to bring home the fiery kitten of rage that almost clawed the attendant's hand off when she'd picked it up, and his parents had exchanged nervous looks as their son tentatively (and unsuccessfully) tried to touch his cat without losing another limb.

"Hiccup," Valka had started, "are you sure that you…?" She'd trailed off at the way Hiccup was looking at his new friend, and didn't make a move to restart her objections after that. Stoick had glanced longingly at the panting golden retrievers in the corner but otherwise didn't complain.

And so Hiccup and Toothless had become bros. Well, sort of.

On his first night in the Haddock household, the not-yet-named Toothless had climbed Hiccup's curtains, drenched himself with Hiccup's glass of water, scratched the paint off the wall by the bedpost, and yowled so loudly that Hiccup surely developed a brain tumor. It'd been so bad that around four AM Hiccup had dubbed his cat 'Night Fury' and resolved to chop off his other leg so that he could go back to spending nights at the hospital.

When Hiccup had woken up the next morning after maybe half an hour of sleep, Night Fury had been shredding his new and barely-used sketchbook with his claws. Hiccup had been so tired and new at being footless that he had gotten out of bed without attaching his prosthesis and immediately fell over.

"Ow," he'd said, his voice muffled by the ground, but he hadn't gotten up. Who cared if a stupid cat destroyed his drawings? It wasn't like they were dragon drawings and it wasn't like they mattered; it wasn't like he was a normal teenager with a normal life and normal problems and the ability to get out of bed without falling over. It wasn't like there was anything at all in the world worth existing for because his life was meaningless and he was weird to the point where he was experiencing his existential crisis at age fourteen.

He'd lain there for a good ten minutes just feeling sorry for himself before Night Fury had come over and sat on his head. Hiccup had grunted his indignation but hadn't moved, as this was the closest the cat had ever gotten to him without attempting to cause him serious physical injury and he didn't want to ruin it. Night Fury had sniffed at Hiccup's hair before walking down the length of his body and stopping at his missing foot.

Hiccup had tensed, because no one but the doctors had ever seen the place where his leg ended (a record he still keeps) and the thought of even a cat looking at his burned, ugly stump had freaked him out. Plus, Night Fury seemed kind of dangerous – what if he took off his other foot?

But Night Fury had just made the cutest kitten-meow ever and nuzzled Hiccup's stump gently. The injury had been recent enough that it hurt pretty badly, but when Hiccup pulled his face up from off the floor and cricked his head back to stare at his cat, he'd looked like… well, a cat. An adorable cat who had the potential to be the friend Hiccup had initially desired rather than guy he'd end up blaming in his suicide note.

And so they'd become friends. It'd taken maybe two weeks for Hiccup's cat to go from being the fierce, unholy offspring of lightning and death itself to someone so harmless and playful that he got renamed 'Toothless.' Seriously, this one time he killed a lizard accidentally and wouldn't get out of bed for days. Stupid Toothless.

But make no mistake, Toothless is a horrible creature. He's got this ever-present look of absolute smugness on his stupid ugly face and he takes up well over half the bed even though he's less than two feet long. He refuses to dance with Hiccup whenever he's in music mode, he throws a hissy fit (literally) every time Hiccup's too busy to pet him, he knocks everything over if he so much as catches the scent of catnip, he practically passes out if you scratch him under the chin, he's terrified of snakes, and he won't even look at any type of cat food that isn't fish flavored. Hiccup's pretty sure that having a diet lacking chicken and turkey and, you know, variety is probably bad for the cat but he's got big green eyes and a great begging face and Hiccup is weak.

As much as Hiccup hates Toothless and every day regrets choosing him over a talking bird that could insult his father, he's serenaded the cat with Queen's You're My Best Friend more than a couple of times and he's pretty sure that makes them bonded for life. Besides, Toothless may be a terrible living being but he's a great cuddler and Hiccup can no longer fall asleep without him.

That doesn't redeem the fact that Toothless is the worst listener in the world, though.

"Oh, right, the science jokes, well I made mine and she said 'oxygen magnesium that was so bad' because the periodic abbreviations for oxygen and magnesium are O and Mg which when combined obviously form OMg and well you're a cat but ordinarily OMG is an abbreviation for 'oh my –'" Toothless cuts him off by crawling up to his face and sitting on his still-moving mouth. Hiccup shoves him off and spits hair on the floor.

"Ugfafh, Toothless, why?" Toothless pastes on his signature smug look and goes back to Hiccup's chest.

"Okay, fine, no more Astrid talk, I know it makes you jealous." Toothless smacks him in the face with his tail, and Hiccup laughs. "Easy there, buddy, you know you're my number one. Besides," he sighs, "it's not like I've got a shot with her anyway."

Hiccup reaches down to mess with his soulmate timer. He knows that he and Astrid could never end up together even in an endless variety of scenarios and situations because she's too good for him in any universe, but he blames his timer anyway. If it didn't exist, he could at least pretend that Astrid was destined to be with him and that their futures were irrevocably intertwined or some other sappy shit like that. As it is, he's got a constant reminder on his wrist that he and Astrid are meant for separate people that they may or may not ever find. It's hard having a simple high school crush when you've got a soulmate timer trying to tell you otherwise.

Hiccup slips off his watch and shoves it under his pillow. Out of sight, out of mind, right? He stares at his blank left wrist for a long time, contemplating on how its bareness somehow makes him feel more vulnerable but also a bit freer, before Toothless pops his head up at looks at him like hey, less soul searching, more petting.

"Sorry, bud," Hiccup says, and goes back to his original task of his scratching his cat behind the ears. He doesn't stop thinking about timers, though – specifically, what the world would be like without them.

It'd be harder, maybe. You'd be living the kind of life Hiccup was, never knowing if that person you passed on the street is your soulmate or if you're ever going to find happiness because you know she's out there but you don't know where. But it would also be… easier, because everyone would be living like that, never knowing how or when or why, and people could fall in love with others without looking down at their timers and thinking, oh, you're not my soulmate, this'll never work. Hiccup's heard of cases like that before, of people accidentally falling for people who aren't their destiny and then spending the rest of their lives resenting their actual soulmate for being someone different.

A world with no timers. Maybe instead of finding his soulmate he'll just steal the timer of every single person he meets until they're all gone and people have no choice but to fall in love with each other by themselves; that sounds possible. Except that no one would fall in love with him, and finding his soulmate is pretty much his only chance at love so hoarding everyone's watches would be kind of counterproductive…

Toothless purrs as Hiccup's hand moves down to his chin, and he smiles. At least he has Toothless. As he pulls his timer out from under his pillow and hooks it around his cat's neck just for kicks, Hiccup wonders for what must be the millionth time if Toothless is soulmate. Like, he's snarky enough, plus he's got the whole leg-thing going on and he's probably objectively pretty hot for a cat. If it weren't for the fact that Hiccup's timer had zeroed out over a decade before Toothless was even conceived, he probably would have bought it.

Other times, when Hiccup is feeling particularly negative, he entertains the possibility that his soulmate has died and he'll spend his whole life waiting for someone who can't come. It doesn't seem plausible, though, because soulmates have sort of connected pain-sensors and apart from some back twinges and aching wrists, Hiccup has felt absolutely nothing that might indicate a gruesome death for his soulmate. Yeah, you can't feel your soulmates pain like you can feel your own (the doctors had told him when he'd lost his foot that she'd probably only felt some minor leg cramping and a headache), but he's still pretty sure he'd feel something if she died.

Toothless suddenly springs up off the bed and onto the floor, and seconds later the doorbell rings. Hiccup groans. It's four o'clock on Friday, nearly 24 hours since his surprisingly successful bonding time with Astrid, and his mom and dad are both at work so the task of getting up and answering the door has fallen to him. He throws his arm over his eyes briefly before shouting "Coming!" and hauling himself off of his bed.

He stumbles down the stairs and curses loud enough for whoever's at the door to undoubtedly hear him. He'd specifically asked his parents for a house with stairs when they'd brought up the topic at his hospital bedside (because, you know, the old one had burned down) due to the fact that he'd wanted to get used to his prosthetic with effort and hard work and pain. He's totally mastered the metal leg by now but the stairs… the stairs are another story.

My age old enemy, he thinks, as he stares (more like stairs right) them down in a futile effort to make them level out into something doable. It's not so much his prosthetic that makes him terrible at both ascending and descending stairs, it's more just that he's a horribly clumsy person and the stairs are evil. He takes a tentative step forward.

"Hey, knock it off, Toothless," he says, as his cat weaves in and out of his mismatched feet and makes things way more difficult than they need to be. Toothless stops trying to trip him and instead latches onto his good foot as he victoriously steps down onto the landing relatively unscathed. "Hey, no – Toothless, I need that, that's my only working leg, I know you have like three more but I'm down to my last one and it's kind of important to me so if you could just –" Hiccup cuts himself off when he opens the door and sees Astrid standing there.

"Hey," she says, glancing from the cat clutching his leg to his bed head. "Bad time?"

"Uh, no," Hiccup says, balancing on his prosthetic and subtly shaking his foot in the hopes of getting Toothless off of it, "uh, no, this is actually pretty standard."

Astrid smiles at him, then smiles some more when Toothless claws down harder and he yelps. "You need some help there?"

"Depends, would you be willing to cut off my leg? Pretty sure it's infected now with loserness." He shakes Toothless harder for emphasis, but the cat is just as stubborn as he himself is. "Soon it will spread to the rest of my body and turn me even more awkward and antisocial than I am now, and the only cure is chicken-flavored cat food which we don't have."

"Wow, that's some disease," Astrid says, her eyes twinkling. "What are you going to do?"

"Well, first I'm going to invite you to come in," he steps aside from the doorway and sweeps his arm around in a welcoming gesture, "and then I'm going to ask you to follow me to the kitchen to watch me employ my tactics."

"You seem different," Astrid says, as she walks purposely slowly to match his Toothless-hindered pace. "You're less awkward than usual, are you sure you got the symptoms for loser disease right?"

"Ah, no, Toothless just instills me with confidence. Now, observe." He gets a can of pineapple out from the cupboard, then turns on the electric can opener and attaches it. Toothless immediately lets go of his leg and starts flicking his tail around cutely, offering wide innocent eyes and purring.

"Impressive," Astrid muses. Hiccup throws his arms up victoriously.

"HA," Hiccup says, bending down (he can't really crouch or even kneel) and showing Toothless the can. "I TRICKED you, this isn't wet food, it's PINEAPPLE. Watcha gonna do now, buddy? You gonna cry yourself to sleep tonight? You gonna throw a hissy fit?" Toothless glares at him, then starts eating the pineapple just to spite him.

"Wow," Astrid says, looking beyond amused at the two of them. Hiccup fumes.

"That little shit, he thinks he beat me just because he got food, well I got him off my leg and I really need that leg and I need it a lot more than he needs pineapple which by the way is like not at all and he doesn't even really like pineapple, he's just eating it to have the upper hand or paw or–"

"I didn't know you were so competitive, Hiccup," Astrid cuts him off, looking like she's only talking to keep herself from bursting out laughing. Hiccup scratches the back of his neck.

"Yeah, well, Toothless is different. Evil. Gotta keep him in line."

"Sure… Toothless, though?"

"Oh. Yeah. That. Long story, I, uh –" He suddenly realizes that Astrid is in his house even though she'd told him in science class she couldn't meet with him today. "Wait, what are you doing here? I thought you said you had volleyball practice after school?"

She raises her eyebrows at him, then glances out his kitchen window. He follows her gaze and notices for the first time that it's raining crazily outside. Oh.

"Right. Rain. No practice. Okay, but how did you know where I live?" That's creepy, right? He shouldn't feel so pleased by that.

"…Hiccup. I drove you home yesterday."

And his endeavors to not look stupid had been going so well, too. "Oh. Yes."

"Plus, your dad's the mayor. Your address is practically common knowledge, and you haven't sent me a text yet so I didn't know your number and I couldn't call ahead."

"Oh! Oh, right, yeah, I can do that." He reaches into his pocket and fumbles with the lock screen of his phone, then types did you hear about the guy who lost his left foot in a fire? he's all right now and sends it to her.

"Oh, haha," Astrid says when she reads it, rolling her eyes and shoving her phone back into her jeans. "Very funny, Hiccup. I should've pegged you for a guy who makes leg jokes."

"… hey, that is not cool. Only I get to make leg jokes."

"Well, you'd better make another one, because I've already got a leg up on you."

"Okay, that one was really not cool. You're not even giving me a leg to stand on here." She shoves him lightly, and he stumbles through his grin.

"Look, Hiccup, making terribly insensitive jokes about your missing limb is seriously fluorine uranium nitrogen and all–"

"You're still speaking in elements! Hey, I figured out how to spell some swear words, like arsenic and sulfur make –"

"–but I didn't come here to make bad leg puns," she finishes, like he'd never spoken in the first place. What an arsenic sulfur.

"Yeah, you're right. Project?"

"Uh huh, I figure we won't have the chance to work on it over the weekends because of extracurriculars," he coughs, "so we'd better do it every afternoon we're free and, well, I'm free."

"All right, then, let's go upstairs," Hiccup says, and scoops up his cat in his arms. "Come on, buddy, you know pineapple is too acidic for you, your mouth is gonna feel all weird later and you'll have no one to blame but yourself."

Toothless shoots him a look that clearly reads I could blame you. Hiccup deposits him haphazardly on the first step of the stairs before carefully starting his ascension.

Astrid is taking in his house much like the way he'd taken in hers yesterday, except that their homes couldn't be more different. His is bigger, but more cluttered, and almost all the picture they have on the walls include his parents making funny faces with himself wedged in between them looking totally done with their bullshit. The more recent ones feature a happier Hiccup with Toothless held securely in his arms and the worry lines around his eyes noticeably less pronounced.

Although Hiccup's relatively embarrassed by the state of their house in general (not a single person in his family cares about cleanliness), his own room is on a completely different level of shamefulness. His laptop is buried under two new leg prototypes, some power tools, a half-eaten sandwich, and maybe four hundred pages of various drawings and designs, and it takes him nearly five minutes of struggling just to get his computer under the pile. The worst part is that his desk had been totally clean only yesterday.

"Sorry," he says, typing in his password (toothless, because he's creative like that) and bringing up his half-started power point. Astrid is examining one of his discarded prostheses.

"Why do you have so many of these?"

"Oh, uh, growth spurt. I'm working on this design to equip my leg with six extendable inches, but… it's not going great."

Astrid stares at him, then at his prosthetic leg, then at the other various metal feet all around the room. "Did you make all these?"

"Well, a few of them. My uncle – well, he's not really my uncle, he's a friend of my dad's – became a prosthesis engineer after he lost his arm and he's a huge pushover so he lets me have a bunch of legs to make adjustments to. I mostly just tinker with them until they break but I've made two or three before."

"Wow," Astrid says. "That's really cool. Well, I mean, it sucks that you lost your leg, but…"

"Yeah, no, I get it. Project, then?" Astrid's about to respond when Toothless jumps up on the bed and starts vying for attention, and Astrid stares at where his left back leg should be for just a moment before sitting down with him and scratching him under the chin. Toothless purrs and sends Hiccup a look like haha, see she likes me better.

Hiccup glares back at him. Shut up.

Make me.

I really will start feeding you 9 Lives.

Ooh, this girl is great with her hands, you were right about her totally being out of your league –

"Okay, Toothless," Hiccup says, totally fed up with the imaginary conversation he's been having with his cat. "Time for you to leave." Toothless looks at Astrid like can you believe this guy and doesn't move.

"Hey, do you always talk to your cat like he's a person?"

"Um. Would you make fun of me if told you I spend nearly an hour every night just recapping my day for him?" Not that he ever listens.

"Probably," Astrid says, moving her hand to behind Toothless's ears. "Hey, so did you tell him about me?"

Only last night, that morning, and about five seconds before she'd arrived. "Yeah, I mentioned you in passing. Toothless thinks I'm going to drag down your grade point average."

Astrid laughs. "What, does he talk back?"

"Ugh, no, thank the gods; it's all in the eyes. Toothless is such a dick, I don't even know want to think about what he'd say if he spoke English."

"I bet he'd spill all your secrets," she mutters, looking at Toothless like he holds all the answers. "He probably knows you better than anyone, huh?"

"Well, yeah, he's my best friend. But there's really not that much to know."

"I don't believe that for a second. I mean, I'll be he knows what the words on the back of your timer mean. And why you took off your timer and put it around his neck."

With a start, Hiccup realizes that Toothless is still wearing his watch like a collar. He had totally forgotten about that. "Oh, gosh, you noticed that, aha, that's just an… experiment I'm doing, you know, for science. Research and medicinal purposes only."

"Uh-huh." Hiccup wrenches his timer off Toothless's neck a little harder than he means to, and the cat glares at him before slinking off under his bed. Hiccup feels bad but still lets out a sigh of relief – Toothless is gone and they can now actually do their project.

Except that Toothless has other plans. He noses the end of Hiccup's dragon book out into the open, and Astrid looks down at it and picks it up.

Toothless is going back to the pound.

"No, wait, don't –" he starts, but she's already opened it up to the first page. Toothless crawls out and gives Hiccup huge innocent eyes like, I was just stretching and my foot accidentally nudged it out, I'm so sorry man. Hiccup doesn't buy it.

"What is this?" Astrid asks, flipping through the various drawings and descriptions. He's got them organized by class (strike then fear then mystery), and he buries his head in his hands as she takes in his nerdiest secret.

"That's just – that's old, I made that ages ago, it's not a big –"

"I saw you drawing this one yesterday," she says, pointing to the page with the Terrible Terror on it. "'Attack 8, venom 12' – is this a stats book or something?"

"I, uh, or something. Look, it's just a hobby and I know it's really lame but –"

"It's kind of cool," Astrid says absentmindedly, flipping through the pages. "Really creative. Ooh, I like this one 'The Deadly Nadder,' she looks awesome."

He snorts despite the situation, because of course Astrid would like the dragon he'd half modeled off of her. Smart, beautiful, prideful, and, well, deadly. "Wait, you don't think it's nerdy?"

"Oh, it's beyond nerdy. But you also talk to your cat like he's a person, so…"

"Hey, that cat just pushed my dragon book out from under my bed in the hopes of embarrassing me, I'm pretty sure that proves he's at least somewhat human. You're going up for adoption, by the way," he directs at Toothless, but the cat just licks his paw and starts washing his face as a dismissal.

"Which one of these is your favorite?" Astrid asks, apparently fascinated by his work. He sits down on the bed with her.

"Oh, uh," he flips the pages back until they land on the Night Fury, which was the first new dragon he'd added when he was rewriting the book from memory after the fire. It's based off of Toothless, obviously, and it's (in his personal opinion) the best dragon in his collection because he's just so objective like that.

"Speed 10, Attack 10, Intelligence 10, Stealth 10 – geez, Hiccup, this thing is like the Mary Sue of dragons."

"He's not poisonous," Hiccup says, pointing to the zero next to the venom category. "And his final fear factor is only 13 out of 15."

"Who's a 15?" Hiccup takes the book from her and quickly locates the Red Death. "There you go, that's the scariest dragon there is. Well, besides the Bewilderbeast, but he's pretty gentle so I dunno if he counts. I still think the Night Fury could take 'em both down, though."

"Of course you do," Astrid says, then catches a glimpse of his latest entry, the t-rex with wings. "'The Fly-rannosaurus,'" she reads out loud, and starts laughing like a maniac.

"Okay, that's enough of that," Hiccup says, blushing furiously as he snatches the book from her and slams it shut. "School now? Please?"

"Fine," Astrid says, wiping tears from her eyes with one hand and clutching her side with the other. "Okay, fine."

They work diligently on their project for maybe 45 minutes, and he's just about to suggest that he put together a labeled diagram of cosmic ray protons hitting the nucleus of an atom when he hears the front door slam open and shut.

"Who's that?" Astrid asks.

"Either my mom or my dad," Hiccup answers. The door slams open and shut again. "Okay, my mom and my dad."

"Is it okay that I'm up here?"

"Yeah, sure, but it might be best if we don't go downstairs. My parents would both have heart attacks and die if they thought I had a human friend." He doesn't even want to think about what would happen when they saw she was a pretty girl friend. Ragnarök, probably.

After maybe another fifteen minutes of studying, Hiccup hears voices arguing from downstairs, and he freezes up. Oh, no… "We've got to get out of here."

"What? Why?"

"Oh, my gods, they're fighting, we have to–"

"They don't sound like they're really mad, Hiccup, they probably jus–"

"No, really, Astrid, get up. You don't understand, they're fighting, let's–"

"I know what fighting is, Hiccup, my parents never do it but I'm familiar with the–"

"It's not the fighting, they fight all the time and it's no big deal, it's the making up that we have to disappear for."

"Oh," Astrid says, comprehension dawning on her. "Oh. Right. Gotcha." They sneak downstairs, past the kitchen where his mom and dad already seem to be… ahem, reconciling their differences, and out the door.

"That was a close one," Hiccup sighs, clutching his hand to his chest and slumping with relief. "This one time I was rifling through their closet looking for my old screwdriver and then they came in and I didn't know how to escape and I had to –"

"That's enough," Astrid says, laughing. "No wonder you're so screwed up."

"You have no idea," he says, hoisting his laptop bag around his shoulders and peering out at the rain, thankful that they have a covered porch. "You wanna… go get ice cream or something? You know, and work on our project?"

"No, thanks," she responds, and his heart sinks down to his toes, "I think I'm all schooled out for a Friday. But we could talk about other stuff?"

He's confused for a moment. This… isn't a rejection? She… wants to hang out with him outside of school-related purposes? "Uh, like what?"

"I dunno, I could force you to tell me what the words on the back of your timer mean." At his are you kidding me look, which he's mastered perfectly from years of hanging out with Toothless, she adds, "Or you could tell me more about the Nadder. You know, whichever you'd prefer."

"Okay, sure. Let's go," he tells her, and she grins at him in a way that makes him decide not to take Toothless to the pound after all.

 **wooooow this was fun I finally got to do toothless and I wasn't even going to originally have astrid in this chapter but I've got to get used to writing her so she showed up. next chapter will be them really getting to know each other over ice cream from astrid's pov. plus: gravity falls guys if you saw it spaz with me**

 **also 21 reviews for my last chapter? I thought that only happened to good writers oxygen magnesium I love you guys xoxo**

 _(keep in mind all of these authors comments are the original from sunnywinterdlouds)_


	5. Chapter 5

Hiccup Haddock is really very kind of slightly sort of super cute.

Astrid had noticed it halfway through seventh grade, when he'd stumbled into chemistry class nearly twenty minutes late stuttering about how his dad had gotten a flat tire and he had a note to prove it. He'd knocked over a table with a bunch of beakers on it as he'd tripped his way over to the teacher, and as he'd buried his head in his hands and apologized relentlessly with cheeks that were red enough to be picked up on satellite cameras, Astrid had thought, huh. Cute.

He definitely hadn't been stereotypically cute, because he was short and scrawny and freckly and tended to drop whatever he was holding whenever anyone talked to him, but he had still been cute. It was probably the eyes. Or the hair. Or the fact that he could never get through a sentence without extending it for at least another twelve seconds with his stuttering.

In any case, Astrid had thought he was cute, but not… like, cute cute. He was… objectively cute, not crush-worthy cute. He was sort of her version of middle school eye candy or something akin to that, but he certainly wasn't anyone she could ever see herself really genuinely liking or ending up with even if you didn't factor in their soulmate timer differences. She felt no urge whatsoever to stick up for him when he got shoved into lockers or tripped in the hallways; there were pangs of sympathy, yeah, but she didn't really care enough to do anything to stop it. Hiccup was Hiccup and Astrid was Astrid and the thought of her actually being legitimately attracted to him back then had been like… urgh.

And then high school had happened.

For the first three months of freshman year, Hiccup had stayed exactly the same, awkward and mumbling and so clumsy that it was like he had two left feet. But then he suddenly didn't have any left feet, and when he'd shown back up at school after a six-week long absence, Astrid had been thrown for a loop.

He'd looked… a little different. Well, really different, counting the foot, but otherwise he was still short and awkward and freckly. He was just – just slightly less scrawny. You'd think being hospitalized for over a month would have left him paler and skinnier than ever, but no, physical therapy had done Hiccup some good. He was still less than five and a half feet tall and his voice cracked every other sentence and he weighed maybe a hundred and ten pounds tops but Astrid had somehow found herself staring at him more than she'd have liked to admit.

It was around that time that Astrid had realized she kind of liked Hiccup. No, not because he'd gotten fractionally hotter, she wasn't that shallow; it was just that the bullying stopped because no one wanted to beat up a cripple and she… well, that made her really happy. She slept easier at night and she felt lighter, like this weight she hadn't even known was there had been lifted off of her shoulders. Hiccup was so not her type but she'd somehow found herself relieved beyond all reason that he hadn't been hurt worse in the fire and that he no longer had anyone but Snotlout picking on him.

And that had kind of pissed her off.

Astrid had always known what her soulmate was going to be like: maybe not blonde, maybe not blue-eyed, maybe not fair-skinned, but he would definitely be like her. He would definitely be into sports and schoolwork and perfectionism because she was into those things and her soulmate would be like… he would be the same as her. Astrid's parents were like that and they were the happiest people she knew and so her soulmate would have to be a male version of herself if things were ever going to work out, and if the gods knew what they were doing they'd give her that fate. They'd give her a life with an eerily similar soulmate. She knew that, she had always known that.

And yet she found herself strangely… drawn to Hiccup. They'd only talked to one another once, back on the first day of kindergarten, but in that short conversation she'd found out that his timer had zeroed out years before hers had and so there was no way that they could be soulmates, even though she'd already known that from his acute nerdiness and distinct lack of athletic ability. Her logic and reasoning did nothing to stop her from feeling all weird whenever Hiccup smiled at a teacher or got so caught up in taking his notes that he forgot to brush his hair out of his eyes, though, and she started feeling sick to her stomach whenever Snotlout so much as twisted his cousin's arm. She'd taken to not only rejecting Snotlout but also imposing physical violence upon him when he asked her out in order to vent her frustration with him.

Astrid had continued to keep her distance from Hiccup throughout the rest of high school, but her weird compulsion towards him hadn't diminished; it'd gotten worse. Over the years, Hiccup hit his growth spurt and had gained all these real lean muscles and grew his hair out slightly and his jaw had gone from all baby-faced to angular and sharp and covered in slight stubble and just… ugh. The worst part was that he didn't seem to realize how unbearably attractive he'd gotten and he kept wearing clothes from when he was a fishbone and they were tight in all the right (but wrong) places and Astrid had slammed her fingers in her own locker door more than a couple of times from just staring at him. He was slightly less accident-prone than he had been, but he still dropped things all the time and couldn't crouch to pick them up because of his leg so he'd have to lean way way over and it'd give Astrid a fantastic view of his equally fantastic – well, people were starting to say that Hiccup's clumsiness was catching because Astrid dropped stuff almost perfectly in sync with him.

By senior year, Hiccup was pretty much a hottie and Astrid pretty much ran into whatever physical mass was in front of her when she saw him. Not that he ever noticed, of course. He was too busy studying or doodling or looking down at his mismatched feet as he walked through the hallways.

Astrid couldn't for the life of her explain why she liked him so much. He seemed nice enough, sure, and he was undeniably attractive, but other than the fact that he was the mayor's son, Astrid really didn't know anything about him. She didn't know what his favorite color was or if he had any pets or what his middle name was and, apart from a few glimpses of what looked like dragons, she didn't know what he got so caught up in drawing in almost every class she had with him. She knew he was relatively smart and a good artist and had a missing leg and a zeroed out timer but, honestly, that was it. She had no clue as to what he was like as a person and therefore she had no reason for shamelessly crushing on him the way that she was.

Astrid wasn't sure whether or not actually getting to know Hiccup would ease her infatuation – there was always the off-chance that he'd be such a dork that she'd fall out of like with him in an instant – but she'd resolved not to find out. She had absolutely no business whatsoever interacting with Hiccup because he wasn't the kind of person that Astrid Hofferson associated with and he certainly wasn't her soulmate and being around him would be pointless and counterproductive. So no talking to Hiccup, no looking at Hiccup, no thinking about Hiccup. Bottom line: no Hiccup. She'd been doing pretty well with it, too.

… until, of course, she'd gotten paired with him on their biggest project of the year in AP science.

The worst part is that she doesn't even have anyone to blame. She can't blame Hiccup, because he'd looked just as miserable about the whole situation as she'd felt when the teacher had called their names out together (she tries not to be hurt by that). She can't blame Ms. Woodward, because she'd been pairing people up alphabetically and therefore in a completely unbiased fashion and it's not like she could have known that Astrid was experiencing a seriously harsh bout of the Hiccups (which is what she internally calls liking Hiccup). She can't even blame herself, because she's put all of her best efforts into both getting over and staying away from Hiccup and it's not her fault if the gods are working against her to make her life harder.

The gods. Okay, she'll blame the gods, that works.

But the Hiccup situation had been horrible, and she'd made a vow on the spot to finish the project in the least amount of time possible in order to condense the hours spent with Hiccup into… less than six weeks. And so she'd cornered him after class and arranged for them to get started right away.

Except then her worst nightmares had been confirmed, because Hiccup had turned out to be not only smarter and cuter than originally assumed but also creative and interesting and sweet and hilarious once you got past the awkwardness barrier. He was the perfect combination of dorky and charming and he spoke periodic table elements and was so easy to talk to and had ridiculously intriguing words on the back of his timer and –

In any case, when her outdoor drills for volleyball practice had been cancelled the next afternoon, she'd driven to Hiccup's house in record timing. To work on the project, not because she'd wanted to hang out with him in his bedroom and hear more of his bad jokes and knock things off the desk periodically just to watch him pick them up. That would be ridiculous.

And then he'd answered the door with a cat on his foot and he'd been so at ease with her and he made his own prosthetic feet and he'd had a stupid book about dragons hidden under his bed and… gods, when he'd invited her out for ice cream her heart had just about stopped. She knows he hadn't been asking her out on a date, but as she sits across from him at the table and watches him lick his mint chip ice cream cone even though it's January, it really kind of feels like one.

"I still can't believe you're eating ice cream with a spoon," Hiccup says for the third time, sounding relatively scandalized. Astrid takes another dainty bite of her snack and glares him down.

"Lots of people eat ice cream with a spoon, Hiccup. You should try it sometime," she adds as he accidentally smears ice cream all over his chin. He pulls it off better than he should.

"Yeah, okay," he says, reaching for a napkin, "but that's only when you get ice cream in a cup. You've got a cone, Astrid, you're not supposed to eat a cone with a spoon."

"Well, if you'd let me order myself or gotten me a cup like I'd asked you to then we wouldn't be in this situation, now, would we?"

He rolls his eyes, and Astrid thinks sassy Hiccup is fairly sexy. "I told you, the lady here gives me a pity-discount because of the leg, I had to order for you. And I managed to suck it up get you vanilla, Astrid, but there's no way I was going to go up there and ask for vanilla in a cup. I've got vanilla ice cream and a cup back at my house."

"Well, we couldn't stay at your house, things were going down at your house. What's wrong with vanilla in a cup, anyway?"

"Oh, I don't know, I guess the most boring flavor of ice cream ever in an inedible container just somehow doesn't do it for me. Or the rest of the world."

Astrid throws her spoon's plastic wrapper at him. Hiccup sticks his tongue out her in a way that's too immature to be attractive… or, it should be.

Having managed to stress the topics of ice cream flavors and spoon-use to a maximum, an awkward silence falls over the two of them. Hiccup sucks in a breath and puffs out his cheeks.

"So…"

"So."

"I… um… how's… the… popularity… thing… going?"

"Fine," she says, amused. Hiccup seems to have random spurts of bold snarkiness that fade out back into geeky shyness within just minutes. She wishes that they'd brought Toothless – he seems to bring out the best in his owner's seriously handicapped (in the social way, not the literal way) demeanor.

"So…" Hiccup tries again, and suddenly Astrid is hit with the terrifying notion that he's about to tell one of his awful puns to break the tension. She beats him to it.

"Don't you dare tell me another cripple joke, Hiccup, I really can'tstand them."

Hiccup stares at her for a moment, then offers her one of his stupid lopsided grins. The feeling of pure satisfaction she gets from making him smile is annoying. "That was pretty good."

"Thank you," she says primly.

"I wasn't going to make a cripple joke, though, honest. I was trying to figure out how to fit the element berkelium into a pun about our town."

She laughs. "I made that connection back in elementary school, Hiccup, you'll have to do better than that."

"You've been a science nerd since elementary school?" he asks, getting ice cream on his nose as he talks. He goes all cross-eyed as he tries to determine the damage, and Astrid nearly chokes on her boring bite of vanilla as she watches him try to get his tongue up to his nose to lick off the mint-chip there.

"I, uh, yeah. Why do you ask?"

"I dunno," he says, giving up the effort and reaching for another napkin. "I just… didn't really start nerding it up until I was fourteen, it's weird to think that you were into science before I was."

She seizes the topic. "What got you into science in the first place?"

"Oh, I've always liked it, I was busy with other stuff before that."

"Like what?"

"Oh, well, um," he says, glancing down at his timer in a way that would be revealing if she could decipher it. "You know. Um. Climbing stairs. Playing hopscotch. Swimming. All those cool things that two-legged people do."

"Hopscotch? I didn't know you were so into competitive sports, Hiccup."

"Shut up, Astrid."

"No, I mean it! I'm pretty sure there's a petition going around to get hopscotch entered into the Olympic games, I could totally link you to it if you'd –"

"Seriously, Astrid, you eat ice cream with a spoon. You have no right to make fun of me."

"If you're going to make up lies about playing hopscotch then I'm going to mock you for them. That's just the way of the world." Hiccup grumbles something that sounds like vanilla and you don't know me I could be a world famous hopscotch champion,and she laughs.

"Seriously, Hiccup, what were you so busy with before you were fourteen? Your dragon manual or something?"

"Oh. Yes. Yes, that." He immediately takes another napkin out from the dispenser and starts drawing on it with a pencil that she hadn't seen him stash in his laptop bag. "I spent like two weeks working on the mechanics for the Nadder's tail spikes, they're a defense mechanism that it can use at will but they can also occasionally be triggered involuntarily by the stimulation of –"

"Hiccup," Astrid cuts him off, pretending she's not impressed with how quickly he's sketched out a detailed diagram of what's obviously a Nadder tail. "You're deflecting."

"I am not deflecting."

"So you mean to tell me that you spent the first fourteen years of your life working on various dragon designs?"

"Of course not! …I spent the first three years learning to walk, talk, and function properly, then the next couple developing my drawing skills and then the next–"

"Hiccup," she says again, and he looks guilty. "Look, it's not a big deal. I was just wondering, I thought you'd be the kind of guy to be obsessed with science since birth. I didn't mean to pry." It's hard for her to retract her initial questions, because she's seriously curious about who Hiccup had been before he'd lost his foot (she knows absolutely nothing about him from then), but he looks so uncomfortable that she sucks it up.

"No, it's… it's not… it's personal," he finally decides on. "It's… I was… I was just being an idiot. I thought I could, I don't know, restart my timer or something."

"Restart your timer?" Wait, what? Where had that come from?

"Yeah, I know. I mean… it zeroed out when I was really little, you know that, so I was just… trying to fix it? I mean, I know it's not possible now, because… because it's made by the gods, you just can't do it, but I was… I was stupid. I thought I could make it work again or something. So I spent a long time trying to force it to."

"That's not stupid," she says automatically, and means it. She's thought of restarting her timer lots of times in the past, she'd just never… believed that she could. "You get anywhere with it?"

"'Course not," he says, looking miserable in a way that makes her wish she'd never asked about this in the first place. "I couldn't even open the thing."

"Oh."

"That's what the words mean, by the way," he adds. "You know, don't give up. I wrote them so that I'd never stop looking. For my soulmate."

"Right," she says, pretending not to be thrilled with the new piece of information. Hiccup is still an enigma, but now he's slightly less so. "Wait, but… I mean, are you still looking? Because… you made it sound like it was a past thing…"

"Yeah," Hiccup says, "yeah, I kind of… gave up anyway. After the fire. And the leg."

"Oh." She wants to ask why, but then she realizes what a stupid question that is because he'd lost his leg and decides to switch the subject to something he's comfortable with. "So when did you get Toothless?"

Hiccups entire demeanor brightens. "The day I came home from the hospital, actually. I used emotional manipulation to get my parents to finally buy me a pet, it was pretty awesome."

Astrid nods. "I got my dog last month after my older brother found his soulmate. My parents felt so bad about my zeroed out timer that I totally could've asked for a convertible to replace my crappy car and they would have caved."

"I like your car," Hiccup says earnestly. "You… your parents know about your zeroed out timer?"

"Well, yeah. Don't yours?"

"Sure, of course, but I was three and… sort of freaking out. I don't think I would have told them about it if it'd zeroed out later on like yours did."

"I was only five, Hiccup, it's not like I was way older than you or anything."

"Yeah, but you were… mature." He grins. "Remember how you shot me down when I talked to you?"

She winces. "Yeah." It'd made sense back then, because she hadn't exactly been impressed with his appearance and she'd been sure that she would find her soulmate by the end of the day anyway, but things hadn't gone down like that and now she kind of wonders what would have happened if she'd accepted his offer to look with her. Maybe they'd be friends… like, good friends, not the casual forced acquaintances that they seem to be at this point.

"I thought you were way too cool for me back then," Hiccup sighs. "Actually, I thought that until yesterday. When you turned out to be a nerd."

"I'm not a nerd," Astrid defends, even though she's pretty sure that liking Hiccup automatically makes her a nerd. "I'm smart. You're a nerd. There's a difference."

"You speak periodic table eleme–"

"You have a seriously detailed 400-page book about dragons hidden under your bed." Hiccup takes a sulky bite of his cone.

"Shut up. Eat your ice cream like the weirdo you are, it's melting all over the table."

Astrid uses his Nadder-tail napkin to wipe up the mess, and Hiccup gives her an affronted look. "That was a masterpiece, Astrid! Aw, look, it's all smudged now, you ruined it."

Astrid rolls her eyes. "So you're telling me your four hundred page book about dragons doesn't have a single picture of a Nadder tail in it?"

"Well… okay, fine, but that was very inconsiderate of you. I might retaliate in kind someday."

"Yeah, right," Astrid says. "You being inconsiderate, honestly, I saw you thank a vending machine once–"

In one of his unpredictable flashes of boldness, Hiccup grabs her hand and directs it so that she shoves her ice cream in her face. "Inconsiderate enough for you?"

She blinks. He… he did not just…

Hiccup's burst of bravery dims back into meekness in record timing. "Now," he says nervously, "now, before you overreact, I was just… just…"

"Just?" she prompts calmly, taking out a new napkin from the dispenser to wipe her face with. He is so going down for this.

"Just… I, uh… being stupid?"

"Granted," she says evenly. "Hiccup, you know what this means I'm going to have to do to you, don't you?"

Hiccup gulps. "I get the general idea of it, yeah. I walk home in the rain? You take off another limb?"

"Nope. I get to rob you of the rest of your ice cream."

Hiccup looks surprised. "But… but there's hardly any left."

"And it's mine."

"You… I licked all over it, and it's mint-chip, and I paid for it–"

"Do you want to walk home in the rain, Hiccup? I don't suppose your leg is especially waterproof."

Hiccup looks miserable, and Astrid knows she's chosen the right path in taking his ice cream. "Okay, fine." He hands her the ice cream cone despondently, and she promptly gets up and throws it (and her own, which is ruined) in the trash.

"Wh-what was that?" Hiccup splutters as she sits back down. She smiles sunnily at him.

"I don't like mint-chip."

"But – but you –"

"Ah, but you see, I do like punishing you."

Hiccup sinks down in his seat. "Psychological torture. You're more diabolical that I'd've guessed."

"Really? You didn't think I'd be this mean?"

"Oh, I thought you'd be mean. I just assumed it'd be physical violence and the works, not emotional warfare."

She laughs and leans over the table to punch him in the shoulder. "I can do both."

"Simultaneously?"

"Don't challenge me."

Hiccup laughs, too, and it's so rewarding that her sticky face and stiff eyebrows are almost worth it.

… … …

"I think it's safe," Hiccup says, pressing his ear to his front door and scrunching his face up in concentration. "I don't hear anything, plus it's been like two hours and they're old so I don't think their stamina is that–"

"I get it," Astrid tells him. He looks at her strangely.

"Hey, do you ever… get jealous?"

"Jealous? Of who?"

"You know. Of your parents."

"What, because they're getting laid on a regular basis and I'm not? Somehow I deal, Hiccup."

He laughs before morphing his face back into something more serious. "No, I mean… because they're soulmates. And your timer…"

"Oh," she says. "Oh. Yeah. I guess."

"Me too," he says. "I've… I've never known anyone else with a zeroed out timer."

"Me neither."

"It's hard sometimes," he says nervously, balancing on his prosthetic foot and kicking at the ground with his good one. "I mean… I like. Having someone. To talk to. Who isn't a cat. And can relate. And–"

"Yeah, I know." He looks so flustered that she spares him. "You wanna talk about it sometime?"

"Yes," he says too quickly, then reels backwards. "I – I mean, if it's not too weird – for you–"

"It's not," she assures him. "I'll see you Monday?"

"Yes. Monday. See you then." He keeps his eyes on her the entire time she makes her way back to her car, so she waits until she's two streets over before fist pumping the air for reasons she can't quite discern.

 **wow, I actually hated this chapter, the dialogue was super awkward and unfunny because I'm just that bad at writing astrid... I promise the next'll be better. thanks for the amazing reviews**


	6. Chapter 6

Hiccup wakes up Monday morning to Toothless kneading his face with his paws. He wishes that he could classify this as being out of the ordinary, but he can't, so he instead shoves his cat off to the side and rolls over onto his stomach. It can't be time for school yet…

Toothless, aka the Worst Living Alarm Clock Known to Man, crawls up onto Hiccup's back and yowls. Hiccup grabs one of his pillows and uses it to swat haphazardly behind him, but Toothless dodges (which is good because Hiccup would feel horrible if he hit him) and makes his way up to Hiccup's head.

The cat from Hel takes a mouthful of Hiccup's hair in his mouth in way of saying get up. Hiccup winces at the bitter reminder that Toothless is, in fact, not toothless, and whines, "Okay okay I'm going" until he's been freed.

"Well, good morning, Mr. Bossy," he grumbles, sitting over the side of the bed and attaching his prosthetic leg. Toothless purrs and stretches out languidly on the covers, like haha I get to sleep all day. Hiccup picks up a shirt from the floor and tosses it at him.

As grumpy as his Monday-morning demeanor is, Hiccup is actually looking forward to school, which is another thing he wishes he could classify as being out of the ordinary but can't. His weekend schedule is… somewhat lacking, and usually by Sunday night he's pining to be back in a classroom. Then he spends every weekday looking forward to Saturday like any other normal teenager, and the vicious cycle continues.

Most of his weekends include aimlessly brainstorming new dragons, starting to cook things and then forgetting about them until the fire alarm goes off, racing Toothless up and down the stairs, and nursing his wounds from falling up and down the stairs. Yes, Hiccup has fallen up the stairs before (more than once, actually) because the gods get such a kick out his pain that they regularly suspend the laws of physics for a few moments just to watch him suffer. Stupid gods.

This weekend, though, had been quite devoid of burnt eggs and gravity-defying stunts; it'd actually been devoid of pretty much everything. Hiccup had mostly sat down on the couch and watched cliché rom-coms with overdone soulmate-timer scenarios, alternating between rolling his eyes at the predictably and crying like a baby because how could he do that they're soulmates what a betrayal aaah. Toothless had walked into the room and stared at his owner with distaste for a bit before hopping up next to him on the couch and joining him in his fury at Brody's actions (and his stupid hot-guy name, like honestly has there ever been an ugly guy named Brody? Hiccup doesn't think so).

Other than that, Hiccup had bargained with his mom to let him draw a life-sized mural of a Night Fury on his wall (to no avail) and pretended to understand the concept of football to his dad (also to no avail). So he's unsurprisingly extra psyched on Monday to get back to school and out of the solitary confinement called his home.

You know. Because of how boring it was. Astrid being at school has nothing to do with it. No, really! Don't listen to Toothless, Toothless is just a horrible fish-breathed liar.

Hiccup yanks his sheets off the bed so that he can put them in the washing machine, and if Toothless falls off of the bed in the process, well, it was completely unintentional. Hiccup smiles sunnily at his cat, who flicks his tail in a dismissive manner and stalks off. Hiccup rolls his eyes, changes out of his pajamas, and follows him.

After a short trip down the stairs (no, really, he trips and falls down the stairs), Hiccup enters the kitchen and is immediately greeted by a sweet-as-honey Toothless curling around his legs. Oh, sure, upstairs the cat is an inconsiderate monster, but in the kitchen they're buddies. Hiccup feeds him some ridiculously fancy fish-flavored cat food anyway.

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbles, as Toothless immediately ditches him to eat. "Figures."

Both his parents are still in bed (he has to get up extra early to walk to school), so he purposely clangs around as much as he can while preparing his toast in the hopes of disrupting their sleep. Suckers. Toothless gives him a look like shut up, so Hiccup doesn't let him lick the empty butter tray, which is gross but then so is Toothless.

"Alright, cat," he says a few minutes later, after finishing his breakfast and shouldering his backpack. "I'm out."

Don't come back, he's sure Toothless is saying. Hiccup would be offended if his mom hadn't informed him that the cat had pined and cried the entire time Hiccup had been away at science camp last summer. Apparently that whole week had been miserable for all parties involved (including him, because he won't say it but he missed Toothless like crazy too).

"See you in Hel, useless mammal," he says in farewell as he heads towards the door. Toothless doesn't reply, as usual, but Hiccup knows that he's pretending to relish in his owner's departure. Their relationship is very loving like that.

… … …

"Watch it, Hiccup," Snotlout says, mixing it up a bit by referring to Hiccup by his well-known nickname rather than 'useless'. Hiccup is impressed – variation is not Snotlout's strongest suit. If only he'd stop shoving him up against lockers… then again, he'd probably start pushing him into other things like fountains or pits of lava so Hiccup can deal.

He gets a kick out of watching Astrid twist Snotlout's arm when he tries to put it around her shoulders – it's more enjoyable now because he's shoved ice cream in her face and come out (physically) unscathed – and heads off to his first class, which is Honors English. It's the only class besides science that he has with Astrid, and also the only one he doesn't have a perfect grade in. Oh, sure, he's got an A, but it's an A minus because creative prose is not his strongest suit. 'Write about the most memorable event of your life' was a stupid prompt anyway, although looking back on it he probably should have written about the leg-thing rather than the day he got his cat…

Hiccup sits down at his strategically positioned second-to-last-row desk. He's the only person in the room for now, as the class doesn't start for nearly another ten minutes, but Hiccup is used to this. Their school doesn't do assigned seating and he hates the thought of sitting somewhere else, so he likes to come in early to claim his spot at the far-left side of the room.

Hiccup gets out his notebook and doodles a random picture of his cat because he can't think of any dragons at the moment. The other students gradually stream in around him as he works, but it's not until he's weaving his signature (a cursive, overlapping 'H3') into the fur of Toothless's tail that someone sits down next to him.

He looks up, expecting to see Fishlegs because he's in this class and is pretty much the only person at school who doesn't avoid Hiccup like one-leggedness is contagious. It's not him, though.

"…Astrid?" he says, more than a little surprised. Sure, they're… kind of friends now, acquaintances or confidants at least, but he had not seen this coming.

"The front row is full," Astrid says matter-of-factly. It's true; the class is Honors English so most of the people there clamber for a spot close to the teacher, but he's never known Astrid to sit anywhere further back than the third row. He's in the fifth.

"O... okay." She doesn't say anything else, so he awkwardly adds to the texture of Toothless's fur even though the drawing is totally done. It looks exactly like Toothless, from the sarcastic glint in his eyes to the way you can tell his tail is in motion, and Hiccup's really just ruining it by making the cat's coat thicker than it should be. Whatever, he can just cover that up with a colored pencil later.

"Nice picture," Astrid says after what feels like hours, although a quick glance to the clock at the front of the room tells him it's hardly been thirty seconds. Tick, tick, tick… wait, is it going slower than usual? Or is Hiccup just so eager to avoid an awkward conversation with Astrid (he hadn't even practiced last night! Argh!) that his perception is being distorted?

"Thanks," he responds. The clock must be going slower than usu– whoa, hold up, the seconds hand was totally turning backwards. Were the gods messing with him? Or was he insane? It was situations like these where he really wished he had a working timer to compare the numbers to…

"Really, it's very–" Mr. Garcia comes in and Astrid cuts herself off. Hiccup closes his notebook and breathes a sigh of relief. He really really really likes Astrid but talking to her… is not okay. Well, it's great, but it's still not okay.

He pays attention to the class for maybe twenty five minutes (a new personal best) before his notes on White Fang become notes on how to make conversation with Astrid.

1\. Ask her about sports. Make fun of yourself for being athletically challenged?

2\. Accidentally drop sketch book while walking with her and see if she picks it up: she looks at it, is seduced by your artistic abilities, and falls in love with you. FOOLPROOF

3\. Tell jokes. Find out if she likes math: if yes, "when you put root beer in a square glass you get beer."

4\. She has a dog: reaffirm that you are NOT a cat person by hating on Toothless constantly (easy)

5\. Also keep Toothless faaaar away from her

6\. Trash-talk Snotlout YEAH

7\. Don't embarrass yourself… let her do most of the talking

He's just adding number 8, actually let her do ALL the talking, when there's suddenly a ripped piece of notebook paper on top of his list. He frowns and looks around. Astrid is staring intently at the teacher.

The note reads, are you even paying attention? He glances at Astrid again, who is still looking assiduously at the teacher. The smirk tugging at the corners of her lips is kind of a giveaway, though.

Writing! Yes! This is his forte! Well, not really, but this way he can't stutter and has some time to think of something clever and drop-dead hilarious.

The witty answer he finally comes up with is: yes. He is so pathetic.

Astrid writes back, Liar. I bet you haven't learned a thing since preschool

I refute your point with my use of the word 'refute'. A little better.

Name two pronouns.

Who, me? There we go.

Haha, very funny

That was the most sarcastic note I've ever read

Glad it came through

Ur a jerk

You're*

Hiccup rolls his eyes. Grammar nazi.

I'm just against text talk

Wow I did nazi that coming

That doesn't even work written

Don't think I didn't see you laugh

I laughed at the attempt not the joke

I don't believe you

Seriously Hiccup there aren't enough vowels in the English language to describe how unfunny you are. Not even if you put them all in one word.

I'm a science nerd not a grammar nazi so enlighten me is there even a word with all the vowels in it? You know that isn't superfragicaliblabla whatever

Unquestionably.

Hiccup grins like an idiot. Aaaah that was good you got me.

Jealous?

Very much so, your natural talent for bad jokes is just so enviable.

See now I just spent ages searching that note for punny wordplay but I came up short, I'm disappointed in you Hiccup

All out unless you want me to resort to knock knock jokes

Siiigh okay go for it

Knock knock.

Who's there?

To.

To who?

To WHOM hahahahahaha grammar nazi jokes

I'm gonna kill you

Wow ur mad

YOU'RE* dammit Hiccup

U need comforting

YOU*

There, they're, their…

Seriously this class will end and so will your life

Dramatic much?

Well that sentence was grammatically correct so I guess I'll live

OH I just thought of another joke

Don't say it Hiccup I mean it

I won't say it… I'LL WRITE IT so what do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?

Okay fine wha- wow you got me that time

haHA

Your use of capitalization is dreadful

Your use of your time on this world is dreadful

Wow hiccup NOW who's being dramatic?

Well now who's using poor capitalization that's right it's you

I didn't capitalize your name because you are no longer a person to me you're just a really bad joke machine

The jokes are great

The jokes are terrible

There must be a hiccup in the system :D

Screw you

I CAN LITERALLY SEE YOU GRINNING ASTRID

It's a grimace

Your shoulders are shaking with repressed laughter

Those are sobs

Sobs of joy maybe

Hiccup you are an idiot and I hate you

:(((

I'd buy that but you're smiling for real

We should do this somewhere we can't see each other's reactions like seriously I can't even guilt you

I could text you later

There's a pause in their long-winded note exchange. Hiccup's staring down at their by-now flipped over and scribbled upon sheet of notebook paper, contemplating his response (would an all-caps yes sound too desperate?) when the bell rings and he jumps hard enough to knock his real notes off the desk. How had the class ended so quickly?

Astrid stands over him as he picks up his stuff. "Well… see you in science class?"

"Sure," he tells her, and when she waits for him to stand up before leaving he feels like he totally nailed that.

… … …

"So," Astrid says as they exit the school together (together!), "project today?"

"Yeah," he responds, even though he'd really rather put it off. They're actually making some progress on it and that sucks because that means they'll finish it quickly and then they won't hang out anymore. "Where do you wanna go?"

"I dunno, we're supposed to have some book references so maybe we should hit the library before we do anything else?"

"Works for me. Wait, the real library, right? The school one is pretty useless."

"Tell me about it," Astrid says, in a way that makes him think she's spent as much time there as he has and finds the lack of… everything kind of frustrating. Honestly, not a single book about dragons in the whole place, what a waste…

As they near Astrid's car, Hiccup debates following through with step 2 of his plan (drop sketch book which disjointedly leads to seduction), but eventually decides against it. He's doing relatively fine as it is – with conversation, not seduction – and besides, the ground is kind of wet and he doesn't want to get his drawings all soggy. Seriously, this is the rainiest January they've had in years.

"Hey, you wanna drive?" Astrid asks him, making the fatal mistake of tossing the keys at him. He fumbles with them for a good ten seconds before they finally slip through his fingers, and he blushes as he bends down to pick them up. Astrid blushes too, for some reason.

"I can't drive," he tells her honestly, which he'd usually be embarrassed about but right now it's a welcomed distraction from his horrible hand-eye coordination.

"Oh," Astrid says, for some reason looking very awkward. "Oh, I didn't realize, I'm sorry, I should've known the foot was–"

He laughs. "Oh, no, not that. My parents are just both horrible drivers, my dad's got a serious lead foot and my mom suffers from extreme road rage. I don't trust either of them to teach me."

"Oh."

"I'll teach myself one day, of course, but I prefer walking anyway so it's… not really important… but–"

"I could teach you," Astrid blurts. "I mean… I'm a pretty good driver. And I've got time. Right now. There's a back way to the library, we could… practice there. If you wanted."

It's great for Astrid to be the stuttering one for once. She looks down and messes with her timer (which is an eye-contact avoidance move that he's very familiar with), and so she doesn't see him grin.

"That sounds awesome. I could pay you in bad car jokes?"

"Gods, no. I think I'll go pro-bono with this one."

She unlocks the car doors as they approach, and he climbs into the passenger's seat feeling like he could fly as far and fast and freely as a Night Fury.

… … …

"No, Hiccup – Hiccup, gear one to get started, that's like basic math how are you stalling before we even move I didn't even think that was possible no the clutch is not the brake you're not oh no don't do that oh oh my gods Hiccup stop."

The flying feeling fades around the fifth time he jerks the car forward hard enough for his seatbelt to probably bruise him. Astrid adjusts his hands on the stick shift more than a couple of times, and it'd be romantic and sweet if she wasn't digging in hard enough to break his skin.

"Ow, Astrid, restraint–"

"Hiccup I am fighting for my life here let go of the–"

"Astrid, we're stalled, we've literally been constantly stalled for the last half hour and there are no other cars around so –"

"There could be! Seriously, Hiccup, just get off the road, can you do that? Just… shift into first, drive slowly to the edge of the street, and–"

"There," he says proudly, pulling up smoothly (okay, jerkily) to the side of the road and stopping the car. "Nailed it."

"Nailed it? Nailed it? You realize driving under the influence is illegal and you have definitely been smoking some serious–"

"Come on, Astrid, let me have this one," he pleads. Astrid exhales heavily through her nose, then offers him a sarcastic smile.

"Alright, Hiccup. Good job. You managed to pull over a car while obviously high as–"

"Astrid," he whines. Astrid smiles for real and puts her feet up on the dashboard.

"Okay, fine. I guess it wasn't terrible for your first time…"

"Thank you."

"…but I'm still going to go ahead and say the bad driving is genetic."

"Astrid!"

"What? I'm just being honest."

"Well, keep it up and I'm driving us all the way to the rest of the library."

Astrid yanks the keys out of the ignition. "Over my dead body."

He grins at her. "Are you suggesting I push you out of the car and run over you? Like, literally over your dead body?"

"You're still not funny."

"You're still way too dramatic. I mean, you're so… drastic." He furrows his brow up in thought. "Actually, if 'drastic' didn't have a 'c' in it, it'd totally be an anagram of your name."

"Guess I'm lucky, then."

"You call that luck?"

"Just switch seats with me, nerd." He rolls his eyes and gets out of the car so that she can drive again. He's about as relieved as she is that they're back in their original, nonlethal positions.

She gets them to the library smoothly, and he watches her with all-new appreciation. Driving is hard.

"So," he says, once they're in through the library doors. "We split up and search?"

"Whoever finds a book on carbon dating first gets to enforce a no-puns rule," Astrid proposes. Hiccup laughs.

"Wow, you're confident."

"Well, if you win by some extraordinary miracle, you get to tell all the puns you want."

"Deal."

Astrid finds a book called Radiocarbon Dating: Interpreting the Past within minutes. Hiccup tells jokes on the ride home anyway.

… … …

Hey, Astrid texts him that night as he's sitting on his bed doing his homework. Toothless looks up from his position of top of Hiccup's good foot (the leg is off) when his phone buzzes.

"Crap, Toothless, what do I say?" Toothless gives him a look that just screams that he doesn't care, so Hiccup writes hey back.

Astrid: You never said if I could text you.

Hiccup: Oh right. Well I was going to say yes so :)

Astrid: You're not busy?

Hiccup: Well i'm doing homework so… nope not at all

Astrid: Can't believe you're an A student

Hiccup: it's true, i'm secretly an idiot and my cat writes all my essays

Astrid: no way that's true they'd be way better than yours

Hiccup: heeeeeey

Astrid: deal with it

Hiccup: you've never even READ any of my papers

Astrid: let me guess: you start it with a pun and end it with a pun and maybe there are sixty puns in between

Hiccup: whoa how did you get a hold of my records

Astrid: pfft I was hoping I was wrong

Hiccup: I actually write my name as 'hydrogen iodine carbon copper phosphorus' on my assignments

Astrid: … no you don't

Hiccup: DO

Astrid: You turn your assignments with your name spelled in periodic table elements?

Hiccup: Only the science ones

Astrid: You are an IDIOT

Hiccup: Ur just jealous because you can't write astrid with periodic table elements

Astrid: Shut up

Hiccup: Omg it's true isn't it

Astrid: No

Hiccup: YES IT IS

Astrid: Shut uuuup

Hiccup: Don't worry you can just write lutetium sulfur erbium

Astrid: Hiccup that spells 'luser' not 'loser'

Hiccup: …maybe that's what I was going for

Astrid: So now I'm a luser

Hiccup: …yes

Astrid: Hiccup srsly

Hiccup: YOU JUST USED TEXT TALK OMG

Astrid: You've been using text talk this whole convo!

Hiccup: But you havn'et! Haha I won!

Astrid: Haven't* and you are a luser

Hiccup: That hurt bad :(

Astrid: It's YOUR insult

Hiccup: So I know how much it hurts

Astrid: Which is not much believe me

Hiccup: Great now my cat is laughing at me thanks a lot

Astrid: SAY HI TO HIM! HI TOOTHLESS!

Hiccup: He called you a luser

Astrid: Did not

Hiccup: Okay fine he called ME a luser but he's a dumb cat so

Astrid: Is he really there?

Hiccup: Of course he is he's lying on my good foot and cutting of the circulation because he is FAT

Astrid: Haha

Hiccup: When I come into class tomorrow with zero feet u know whos to blame

Astrid: PIC

Hiccup: There ya go he's a devil

Astrid: He's so cuuute

Hiccup: It's a front I think he's a part of a gang

Astrid: Suuuure

Astrid: Actually hey I don't have a cat so I do my own homework which I should get started on

Hiccup: Booo okay bye wait why did you text me when you have homework?

Astrid: Bye

Hiccup stares at his phone for a while after that, resisting the urge to write out one last text message with a bunch of smiley faces and emoticon hearts. Astrid might get a kick out of it or maybe insult him some more or even not reply at all, but he… feels really weird, sitting there on his bed with his cat. He's never ever felt out of place with Toothless so it's strange.

He puts his homework away, because Astrid's thrown him all off-kilter for the night or possibly forever, and curls up under the covers. Toothless crawls into his arms almost immediately, and Hiccup strokes him distractedly as he thinks.

Astrid… is not his soulmate. That much is obvious. So why… does he like her so much?

He takes his timer off and hangs it around Toothless's neck, staring at his bare wrist and searching for that feeling of freedom he usually gets when his watch isn't on him. It doesn't come.

"Astrid is not my soulmate," he says aloud, and falls asleep to what he's sure is the sound of the gods laughing at him.

… … …

 _Aaah so I'd never ever written Hiccup before last week but his snarky and dramatic inner-monologuing already feels like home :) also I changed my author's note format to italics, I just wasn't bold enough to keep up with the old style haha YEAH_

 _Okay but 117 reviews for a few half-decent chapters? Whoaly crap u guys I would like to formally propose marriage to every single one of you, I'm trying to thank all my future husbands and wives individually through PMs but if I missed you or you're anonymous then: THANKS! SO MUCH! Also to one guest; that was meant to say turkey not tuna but auto-correct got all up in my biz :p fixed it and thanks for pointing it out! xo Jolly_


	7. Chapter 7

"Okay," Hiccup says, adjusting the electric can opener's position on the counter one last time (he's still not sure why). "Okay. What do you think, Toothless?"

Toothless gives him a look like, I only care about the can opener when you're using it on my food. Hiccup groans and angles it slightly to the left.

"Alright, how 'bout now? This looks nice, right?"

It's a can opener, Toothless is surely saying. You're insane.

For once, Hiccup agrees with the imaginary dialogue he's given his cat. Astrid is coming over in (he checks the microwave clock) twenty minutes and he's still not done perfecting the house.

See, it'd be fine if she'd never been there before, but she had and he really wants it to look better than that time because he's still embarrassed about his house's state compared to hers. But he can't clean it up too well because she'll know it's abnormal and get suspicious of him and somehow connect the dots and realize he's crushing on her and never speak to him again and then, like, the zombie apocalypse will happen or something. It's plausible.

He really wishes she hadn't dropped in unannounced that one time.

"Okay, Toothless," he says, talking out loud like he always does when he's freaking out. "Okay, do you remember what we discussed?"

I am a cat and we discussed nothing. Great, his cat is pointing out in an imaginary conversation that their previous conversation was also imaginary. "Shut up, Toothless. I want you either out of the room or on your absolute best behavior while Astrid's here, okay?"

The look Toothless gives him is an astonishingly equal combination of good luck with that and fat chance and HA! Hiccup sighs heavily.

"I didn't want to do this, Toothless, but you leave me no choice. While Astrid is here, I want you to act absolutely… purrfect."

Either Toothless really does speak English or he infers from Hiccup's tone of voice that he's just told a bad pun – either way, he yowls and hides under the table. Hiccup laughs like a maniac.

"I mean it, Toothless, I want you to sweep her off her feet with your amazing personality! I want you to whisker away!"

Toothless sticks his head out and hisses.

"… is that your way of saying you think my jokes are hissterical?"

Toothless runs from the room at record speeds for a three-legged cat. Hiccup calls out after him, "Hey! Are you going to be good? I didn't get confurmation!"

Toothless doesn't come back. "I'll take that as 'it's pawssible'."

… … …

After another twenty minutes, the kitchen and the living room and especially his own bedroom (Toothless had kind of trashed it in his unsuppressed rage) are all sub-par at best, but Astrid rings the doorbell at five o'clock sharp and Hiccup has no choice but to let her in. He's actually kind of insulted when she doesn't even notice how moderately nice the house looks, because he'd spent hours getting it to that level of perfect imperfection. It's a difficult technique that's usually applied to hair (but not his).

"Hey, Astrid," he says, opening the door for her and glancing nervously at the stairs for signs of Toothless. It's Friday, a week and a day since they'd first started their project, and Astrid had wanted to work on it today despite having volleyball practice after school. Hiccup hadn't complained, so they'd arranged to meet up at his house afterwards because his parents are out to some fancy mayor dinner (he was supposed to go with them, but… um, eating fish with the heads still on versus hanging with Astrid? Yeah, not hard). Astrid had promised to come at five on the dot and Hiccup had (silently) promised to clean the house until then.

Astrid takes her backpack off from around her shoulders and retrieves her notebook from it as they walk towards the kitchen. They're about halfway done with their project by now, which is… bad. And good. Hiccup's definitely going to be really down about not getting to spend time with Astrid anymore (because, let's face it, she's never going to associate with him again once she has the choice not to), but he's also probably way too into her at this point and the less time he spends with her, the easier it will be to get over her when she inevitably goes back to ignoring him.

As Astrid smiles at him and sweeps her bangs out of her eyes for the third time since she's gotten there, Hiccup thinks it'll still probably be pretty hard.

"How was practice?" he asks her, poking the can opener slightly to the right as he passes it. "Did you have fun? Break anyone's nose? Or… arm? Is that good in volleyball?"

"I don't think physical injuries are really good in any team sport," Astrid says, giving him an amused look. "As they usually get the team a foul."

"Oh." Foul… isn't that just a synonym for bird? No, wait, that's fowl, foul means… like, bad, but he's not sure how it applies to sports… besides the fact that all sports are bad… "Okay, well, sounds fun. Sit down? I, uh – should I order pizza? Since you'll be staying for dinner…"

"If you want to," Astrid says. "I'm cool with whatever."

"Well, you probably just… burned a lot of calories… and pizza's easy… so… what would you like? I mean, you know, what topping?" Please don't say anchovies please don't say anchovies PLEASE don't say anchovies –

"How's pepperoni?" she suggests, and Hiccup breathes a sigh of relief. Astrid is already proving to be way better company than his cat, who somehow always convinces him to order fishy pizza without saying a single word.

"Sounds good. I can order now and we'll eat while we work?"

"Alright." Astrid puts her feet up on the kitchen table and looks for all the world like she was born to be there, and Hiccup doesn't look at her as he takes his cell phone out of his pocket and calls up Domino's (it's probably sad that he has them on speed dial). After ordering one large pepperoni pizza and returning his phone to its rightful place in the back of his jeans, Hiccup sits down next to Astrid and exhales awkwardly.

"So… should we get started?" He's not as bad at talking to her as he'd been at first, as they've now been hanging out for over a week, but it's still… hard. He's still socially challenged and Astrid's still gorgeous and his nerdiness is still fully active and so he's pretty sure he's going to be at least a little weird around her until one of those things lets up. Which he is fairly certain will not happen.

"Weren't we going to wait for the pizza? I'm pretty sure food boosts productivity by at least two hundred percent."

Hiccup decides not to comment on Astrid's obviously made up statistics. "Alright, then." Another awkward silence falls over them, in which Hiccup tries to mirror Astrid's casual position by putting his feet up on the table, until he realizes how stupid his foot looks and gives up on trying to be cool. People with missing legs are not cool, and yes, Toothless, that includes you.

"So how'd your timer zero out?" Astrid says out of nowhere, and Hiccup chokes on his own tongue even though he hadn't been doing anything with it. After hunching over the table and coughing for a while, Hiccup looks up at Astrid with watery eyes and clears his throat.

"Um. Well. I saw my soulmate."

Astrid rolls her eyes. "Wow, Hiccup, I never would've guessed. I meant where and when, stupid."

"Oh. Oh, ah, right." He really wants to talk about this stuff with Astrid – he's even considered bringing it up over their last couple of meetings – but it's… well, it's kind of painful. Kind of difficult. Astrid is the only person he knows who could possibly understand how hard his situation feels sometimes, but she's still kind of untouchable in his eyes and even though she'd probably get exactly what he goes through, she's still Astrid. And he's still Hiccup.

She's looking at him with blue eyes that are nothing if not sincere, though, so he says, "I was three. I didn't think it was really important or anything, so I… just didn't pay attention. Or care." He drops his face down against the table and lets out a muffled, "Stupid."

"Well," Astrid says quietly, "I was looking at my timer constantly for the entire week leading up to the end and I still managed to miss him, so don't feel too bad. I guess fate is fate or whatever it is that the gods always say."

"Yeah, I know," Hiccup sighs. "But at least you get to blame fate. The only person I can blame is myself for being an idiot."

"Maybe your fate was to be an idiot," Astrid suggests. "I mean, you're still carrying it out, so–"

"Hey, shut up," Hiccup tells her, despite feeling better for some strange reason. Like, all Astrid has to do is insult him and he cheers right up? He really is an idiot. "I was three."

"You don't really go a lot of places when you're three," Astrid muses. "Where'd it happen? The grocery store? A restaurant?"

"The park, actually," Hiccup says. "My mom took me there for the day and on the ride home I realized my timer was zeroed. It sucked."

"Yeah, no kidding. Which park was it, the one on Willow?"

"Is there any other park in this town?"

"Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean… it's a small town. Maybe she's not too far."

"Oh, gee, thanks, I've never considered that before." His words come out just a bit too harsh and Astrid looks just a bit too offended, so he adds, "I mean, I've looked. Just… no luck."

"I know that feeling," Astrid sighs. "I bet mine died."

"Pretty sure you'd feel that. Experienced any mind-numbing, excruciating pain over the last decade or so?"

Astrid snorts. "I've broken a few limbs, nothing major. I got pretty sick freshman year, though, maybe he died of a horrible disease."

Maybe he was in a coma after losing his leg in a fire, Hiccup thinks for some reason. Then he nearly falls off of his chair. Where had that come from? "I, uh – no, I'm sure he's fine. He's probably just older than you… you know, he was at our school showing a little sibling around."

"Maybe. What do you think happened to yours?"

"Eh, probably the same thing. Like, she was a babysitter or something. What do you think, can you see me with an older woman?"

Astrid laughs. "Uh, no. It was probably some kid there you saw, do you remember any faces?"

"I wish," Hiccup sighs. "Just hair colors. Two blonde, one brunette, one black. I think there were only four girls there, but… it was a long time ago."

"Yeah. I used to go to Willow Park, too, it was always pretty crowded. What month was it?"

"April," he says. "Almost fifteen years now." He'd given up somewhere after the ten-year point, though.

Astrid suddenly looks weird. No, she doesn't look weird, she never looks weird, she's just… got a weird look on her face. Yeah, that's it. "Willow Park," she mutters. "I used to go there all the time."

"You already said that."

"I never saw you there, though," she says, like he hadn't even spoken. "I don't think I saw you at all until kindergarten."

"Yeah, I don't think we met until then."

"But you don't remember faces," Astrid contemplates, looking completely lost her in her own musings. Hiccup still has no idea where she's going with this train of thought.

"O…kay? Meaning…?"

Astrid looks at him again. "Meaning… well, what if–"

The doorbell rings. Astrid stops talking immediately.

"That must be the pizza," Hiccup says, jumping up and pushing his chair back from the table. "Be right back?"

Astrid stares at him a little more, then nods. Hiccup leaves the room to pay for their dinner, and when he comes back Astrid has her laptop out and is staring intently at it.

"So," she says as he sits back down. "I know we decided on a step-by-step explanation of the carbon dating process, but I was actually thinking that going chronologically would be clearer in terms of–"

"Wait, hold on, what were you going to say earlier?"

"Nothing important. Now, step-by-step does make sense if we go by–"

"It sounded important."

"Well, it wasn't. The thing is, if we go chronologically that means we could change the second paragraph to the introduction and make it way stronger than it–"

"Seriously, what was it?"

"It was ridiculous," Astrid snaps, looking seriously pissed off at him for the first time ever. "Now would you stop interrupting me so that we can work on our project like we're supposed to be doing? Or do you want me to leave?"

"Um," Hiccup says, feeling way more hurt than he should, "um, okay." He knows Astrid's here solely to get a good grade in science, but… somehow he'd managed to forget it for the moment, and having it shoved back in his face by Astrid herself is like, ouch. He feels uncomfortably subdued as he types in his laptop password and silently brings up their power point.

Astrid launches into a long-winded tangent defending her argument for the use of chronological order rather than step-by-step. Hiccup still doesn't say anything.

… … …

Astrid packs up her things wordlessly around eight o'clock, and Hiccup watches her out of the corner of his eye as he saves the changes they'd made to the written portion of their assignment. He thinks about speaking several times, but he can't think of anything to say, so he stays quiet. He's on the verge of just going upstairs and waiting for her to leave when she finally says something.

"Sorry for being… you know. I just really want to finish this thing."

"I get it."

"And it's not – because I don't like talking to you, or –"

"It's cool, really. See you Monday?"

Astrid stares at him. "Actually… maybe we could meet up over the weekend?"

Hiccup falters. "Um, okay… I thought we were only going to work on weekdays?"

"I was thinking I could teach you how to drive." Hiccup thinks he hears the door to the house open and close, so his parents are probably home, but they know already Astrid is here and this is kind of a pressing matter so he ignores it.

"Uh. I thought things went terribly when we tried that."

"Well, yeah, but it was only your first time. You just need practice."

"Astrid, I sucked at that. Not that I don't want to learn from you," he adds hastily. "I'm just… not very good at it."

"You can't expect to get it right away, Hiccup, even I didn't get it right away."

"Yeah, but…" Why is he fighting this, again? Oh, right, because he doesn't want Astrid to feel like she has to teach him how to drive just to be nice. "I just… I couldn't even figure out how to… stick the thing in the other thing." He mimes putting the key in the ignition, because Astrid standing above him with a little smile on her face is rendering him incapable of mustering up the use of proper English.

"I noticed. But you got it eventually." After turning it upside down and right side up a good six times and somehow managing to not get it in until the seventh. "Do you want to meet up tomorrow or not?"

"Well…" Since she's offering… "Alright. Can you come over around lunch time?"

"Yeah, no problem. But you provide the necessities." She stares meaningfully at the pizza box on the table, and Hiccup laughs.

He's about to respond when he spots his parents in the kitchen doorway for the first time. "Oh, hey, Mom. Dad. I thought I heard you come in, how'd the dinner go?"

His parents are both silent. They look absolutely shocked, really, he hasn't seen them this bewildered since he'd told them he needed some shaving supplies for his stubble. He's confused about it for a moment until he realizes that there is a very pretty girl in the kitchen with him, looking for all the world like she not only doesn't hate him but maybe even likes him.

"Oh, uh, this is Astrid. She's my partner. On that project I told you about."

Astrid looks kind of awkward. "Hi, Mayor Haddock. Mrs. Haddock. I was actually just leaving, so…"

Neither his mom nor his dad say a thing, which Hiccup finds a little weird. Why aren't they jumping on the chance to embarrass him? Is the fact that a girl is hanging out with their son really that astonishing? He's not that bad, honestly…

"Well," Hiccup says. "I guess I'll walk you out, then, Astrid?"

"Yes. Um. Okay." She glances at his gaping parents. "You… have a good night."

"They will," Hiccup says, almost pushing her towards the entrance hallway, and lets out a relieved breath once his parents are out of sight. "Sorry, I don't usually have girls over. And by usually I mean ever."

"Well, that much is apparent. Seriously, it was like I had four heads in there or something."

"Yeah, sorry. Um… see you tomorrow, then? If you're not too freaked out by my parents."

"Nah, at least I know where you got the crazy from now." He bumps her shoulder with his own as a reprimand, and it feels… natural. Almost.

"Drive safe."

She grins at him. "I'm not you, Hiccup, I will."

He sticks his tongue out at her as she leaves, then trudges back to the kitchen to give his mom and dad a talking to. "What was that all about, guys?"

But his mom's not in the kitchen anymore – it's just his dad, whose sitting at the table with his hands folded and a serious expression on his face. Hiccup already hates this.

"Son… we need to talk."

Ah, crap.

"Actually, Dad, I was just heading up to bed so if you don't mind I think I'm going to–"

"Sit down," his dad says, in the kind of flat voice that got him the title of Stoic around town. It's commanding and mayoral and Hiccup sits down.

"Son," his dad says, the boss-voice tinged with a hint of awkwardness. "You… you're a young man now, and I'm sure you've noticed some… changes as you've aged, as well as a few… urges. Which are all perfectly natural but I think it would be best if you–"

"Dad. No." He is not getting the sex talk right now just for associating with a girl. No way. "I hit puberty two years ago, Dad, I know my voice didn't really change but it is a little bit deeper and look, I have a tiny beard, I mean it's nothing like yours and you can only see it if you squint but it's really not that–"

"Hiccup," his dad says, and Hiccup gulps because his dad only calls him by his nickname and not son when he's being really serious. At least he hasn't moved onto Hayden yet. "I… didn't think this would be a problem, because of your zeroed out timer, but clearly you've given up on finding your soulmate but I don't it's right for you to sleep with other people, I mean the gods know your mother wasn't my first and I've always regretted that and I'm sure when you find your soulmate you're really going to –"

"Dad. Stop. I don't know what you're talking about but I don't like where this is going and I really don't like hearing about all the girls you hooked up with before mom."

"Son," his dad sighs. "I understand that Astrid is… a very attractive young girl, but–"

"We're not having sex, Dad." It's… flattering that his dad thinks he could somehow convince a girl like Astrid Hofferson to sleep with him, but… no. Holy mother of all the gods no.

"Your mother and I heard your conversation, son," his dad says tiredly. Hiccup furrows his brow.

"About… me learning to drive?"

His dad winces. "Yes, okay. If that's… what you're calling it these days."

Hiccup is suddenly having an extremely difficult time keeping a straight face. He breathes in and out slowly to keep his calm, then remembers his line about putting the thing in the other thing and bursts out laughing.

"Hiccup, I know this seems like a laughing matter now, but one day–"

"Dad," Hiccup laughs. "Dad, no, she's really teaching me how to drive." He gasps for breath, then the situation hits him all over again and he breaks down for the second time.

"What do you mean?"

"Driving, Dad," he chokes out. "Driving. No sex."

"…oh." Suddenly his dad looks equal parts relieved and embarrassed. "Well. Then. Good. It's… about time you learned to drive."

"Yeah," Hiccup laughs (almost sobs). "Yeah, it's just driving. Thanks for unnecessarily scarring me for life, though."

"Yes. Well… it's about time you head off to bed, then, isn't it?"

"Dad, it's barely eight."

"Go to bed, Hiccup." Hiccup falls over more than usual on his way up the stairs because he can't see through the tears in his eyes, then collapses onto his bed and laughs some more into his pillow.

Toothless gives him a concerned look. Hiccup waves him off, then waits a few minutes to be sure that Astrid's home before texting her.

Hiccup: so my dad thinks were sleeping together

Astrid: What.

Hiccup: uh huh he and my mom heard our conversation and thought it was one big sex euphemism

Astrid: why would they think that?

Hiccup: think back 2 the specific wording of it

Astrid doesn't text him back for a few minutes. Then:

Astrid: oh gods

Hiccup: Yup

Astrid: Oh GODS

Hiccup: YUP

Astrid: Should I be laughing this hard?

Hiccup: Not until I give u the details

Astrid: Oooohhhh goooods

Hiccup: Dad: I heard ur conversation Me: about driving? Dad: if that's what ur calling it these days

Astrid: Im dying

Hiccup: I can tell by ur improper grammar

Astrid: Seriously that's a great code for sex people should use that

Hiccup: Hey that's true think of what all the phrases could stand for… like 'switching gears'

Astrid: Parking

Hiccup: Pulling out

Astrid: Accelerating

Hiccup: Going in reverse

Astrid: Hey am I gonna be allowed to hang out with you from now on then?

Hiccup: Are u changing the subject because u can't think of anymore thinly veiled sexual innuendos

Astrid: Maybe

Hiccup: Okay then I set things straight ur good

Astrid: Awesome then I can fully appreciate this for how hilarious it is

Hiccup: Shut up I just got the sex talk a month away from my eighteenth birthday it is NOT funny

Astrid: So you don't think it's funny?

Hiccup: I get to think it's funny YOU don't

Astrid: Hey so your birthday's next month?

Hiccup: Yup

Astrid: When?

Hiccup: …next month

Astrid: SPECIFICS

Hiccup: The end of next month

Astrid: Seriously Hiccup the DAY

Hiccup: The VERY end of next month

Astrid: So February 28?

Hiccup: Something like that

Astrid: What do you mean 'something like that' it's either the 28th or it's not

Hiccup: It's the last day of february

Astrid: So it IS the 28th?

Hiccup: …

Astrid: Omg it's the 29th isn't it

Hiccup: No

Astrid: Omg it IS

Hiccup: Shut up

Astrid: You were born on a LEAP YEAR that's just too good

Hiccup: Shut uuuupp

Astrid: You're only four omg

Hiccup: I've had four birthdays but I am not four and stop using text talk it's freaking me out

Astrid: Omg your dad gave a four year old the sex talk

Hiccup: Im gonna kill you

Astrid: That's so irresponsible should he even be the mayor

Hiccup: Astrid I swear

Astrid: Okay fiiine I've had my fun but don't think this won't come back again

Hiccup: I'll give you full rights to hold this over me if u tell me what you were going to tell me earlier today about the soulmates thing

Astrid: Hey I have to go

Hiccup: OK SORRY

Astrid: No really goodnight

Hiccup: You don't have to tell meeee

Astrid: And I never will but I actually have to go the parentals are trying to make conversation with me bye

Hiccup: Okay bye

The last of Hiccup's hilarity fades, and he's left alone on his bed (save Toothless) to wonder what on earth Astrid had wanted to say to him.

… … …

 _Dunno which part of this was more fun, the innuendos or the cat puns. Also I have a legitimate reason for this being late – on Sunday afternoon I had like 200 words left to write and then my three month old laptop died FOR NO REASON UGH. after some attempts at resuscitation and a darth-vader like 'nooo' I got out my old laptop to rewrite it but it needs a cooling fan and I sold mine so I had to buy a new one, THEN rewrite this chapter and ps my laptop's still broken and will be forever siiiiigh also that hopefully explained why this chapter was really poorly written, I redid it in under half an hour and pretty sloppily_

 _Okay but you guys are too amazing if it weren't for ur awesome reviews the loss of my laptop would have totally killed me, mind you it still destroyed a little part of my soul but thanks to you I'll survive :) you're all incredible!_


	8. Chapter 8

Astrid pulls up in front of the Haddock house at exactly 12:30 the next day, and Hiccup bids a short farewell to his cat ("Bye, Toothless, and if I come home to my room looking like a catastrophe again you will be punishe – ow ow stop ow no!") before dashing out the door. Astrid, who's standing on his front porch with her hand fisted up like she'd been about to knock, gives him a look.

"Sorry. Toothless was trying to claw my other leg off, I'm kind of in a hurry to get some space between us. Can we go?"

"All right, then," Astrid says, looking rather bemused. "Should we find a back road for you to drive on so that you don't kill any pedestrians?"

"If you're that insistent on taking all the fun out of this, then sure." He offers Astrid his most winning smile, which is not all that winning, and she rolls her eyes as she hands him the keys (apparently she's learned not to throw them, although he almost drops them anyway). Hiccup notices that she avoids eye contact with him throughout this entire interaction and wonders why.

"So…" he says, climbing into the driver's seat and reciting a quick and silent prayer to the gods to spare him from a fiery car-crash induced death (which is a dumb idea, clearly the gods hate him). "Where am I going?"

"Wherever," Astrid mutters, and it strikes Hiccup that she looks like she'd rather be anywhere but here, which is kind of hurtful. Hey, she'd propositioned him, not the other way around. She has no right to look so miserable. "There's a back street near my house that you could practice on."

"Will I be able to get there without killing any innocent bystanders?"

"Yeah, probably." Hiccup notices for the first time that she has bags under her eyes. Actually, now that he looks at her properly, her whole demeanor screams tired and irritable, and he wonders if she got any sleep at all last night.

"Are you sure you don't just want to go home? You look… um. Like you could use a nap."

"I'm fine," she says shortly. "Just stayed up pretty late."

"Doing what?"

"Reasoning with myself." Hiccup supposes that would make sense with context, but Astrid doesn't look like she's in the mood to provide him with any and so the statement ends up being really freaking confusing.

"O…kay? But are you sure you're–"

"I'm fine," she snaps, then sighs. "Look, just… just tell me a bad pun or something, alright? I could use one."

Since when does Astrid ask to hear one of his amazing jokes? Ah, well, he's not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Have I really driven you to the point of asking for puns?" He presses down on the accelerator to emphasize his joke and accidentally sends the car jolting forward.

Astrid groans as he applies the brakes too hard, and Hiccup barely hears it over the sound of his own racing heart beat. Driving is just one near-death experience after another. "And here I thought you'd exhausted all your car puns."

He laughs. "Good one." At Astrid's blank stare, he adds, "You know… like a car exhaust system? That was intentional, right?"

"Absolutely not," Astrid says, looking rather horrified but no longer miserable. "I can't believe I accidentally made a car pun, you must really be rubbing off on me."

Hiccup chooses to ignore all of the seriously inappropriate jokes he could make about rubbing off on her and instead says, "Everyone who hangs out with me turns punny, you auto know that."

She groans. "Give me a break."

He laughs again. "Okay, that one was good."

Astrid stares at him again. "What?"

"You said 'give me a brake', right?"

"No," she says emphatically. "No, I did not. I am literally just talking and you are turning everything I say into a bad joke, please stop that."

"Ah, come on, there's no way those weren't on purpose. You're fuel of it."

Astrid throws her head back against her seat. "Seriously? You're still not out of car puns?"

"I'm never out of car puns."

"Well, don't you have any other puns? I'm seriously tired of these."

"Ha! I get it, like tired,that was–"

Astrid glares at him. He decides to go for different approach. "It's not like I have a lot of options, Astrid, there just aren't that many puns to tell. I mean, I guess I could give gun jokes a shot –"

"Oh, gods."

" – and I know my Harry Potter puns would leave you spellbound –"

"That one wasn't even good."

" – but my TV jokes would definitely get bad reception, and –"

"Okay, that's enough."

" – my jokes about dishes are just too dirty," he finishes. Astrid does not look amused.

"Are you done?"

"Not if you don't want me to be."

"I want you to be. Please start the car and crash it so that I never have to listen to you talk again."

"Aw, sorry, am I boron you?"

"Hiccup! You can't just switch gears like that and go for a random science joke, that's not –"

"Oh, why didn't I think of that one? Switching gears –"

Astrid shoots him eye daggers. Hiccup starts the car.

… … …

Hiccup does a relatively decent job of getting to the back street near Astrid's house (that is, he doesn't kill anything, unless you count the part of Astrid's temporal lobe that used to process humor), but once they're actually on a secluded road without the imminent danger of other drivers threatening them, he does pretty badly. Maybe that says something about him… but in any case, he drives off into the grass a couple of times and at one point manages to avoid hitting a brick mailbox by only a fraction of an inch (this is because Astrid had been smiling at him but he can't tell her that). By three o'clock, it's hard to determine who's more stressed – him or Astrid.

"Maybe we should take a break," Astrid says breathlessly. The incident with the pigeons has clearly left her rattled, and she's actually legitimately clutching at her chest with her hand. Hiccup didn't know people did that anywhere but black-and-white horror movies when the protagonist finds out that their soulmate is a hunchback or a dog or something.

Hiccup is far too busy catching his breath to turn her sentence into a car pun, so he just nods instead. He's not sure which is more amazing – the fact that he and Astrid are somehow unscathed after all that or the fact that her car is somehow unscathed after all that. Like, seriously. Her good luck must be so intense that it not only counteracts but overpowers his bad, which is a feat that should not be taken lightly. No, really, he's so unlucky that he actually lost his leg in a freak fire when he was fourteen; the fact that they're still alive is impressive.

They sit there in silence for a few moments before Hiccup finally musters up the comprehensibility to say, "So I take it you're driving back?" Astrid laughs in a way that's slightly hysterical as she nods.

"That was actually the most terrifying experience of my life."

"Astrid, I was once trapped in a burning building with a dwindling oxygen supply and walls collapsing around me and this has still been the most terrifying experience of my life." He means it as a joke, but Astrid's not smiling anymore.

"I didn't know that," she says, and there are suddenly lines around her eyes that make her look a lot older than seventeen. He doesn't like knowing that he's the one who put them there.

"I was just kidding, Astrid."

"So that didn't really happen?"

"Well… no, it did. But I thought everyone knew I lost my leg in a fire."

"Everyone does," she says sort of quietly. "I just thought… you were unconscious through the whole thing or something. Like you went to bed one night and woke up a while later in the hospital."

"That's pretty much what happened," he half-lies. "There was just a bit of panicking in between."

"How –" she falters. "How long were you out?"

"Oh, uh, a week and a half." Astrid flinches visibly. "Why?"

"No reason," she says quickly. "Just… thinking."

"About…?"

"Last night," she says, and then suddenly turns to face him with an expression that resembles steely determination. "Hiccup, last night I told you I got sick in freshman year."

"Yes, you did," he responds. "And this matters… because…"

"Because – it – I… a week and a half…" Her face is red, but it doesn't look like it's from embarrassment. It looks like it's from… effort. The effort of trying to force out words that are hard to string together. Which Hiccup totally gets in theory (he's been there) but doesn't get in practice because why would Astrid be having a hard time being coherent right now? "I… Willow Park, and – I never saw you – but then – and kindergarten – "

"Okay, Astrid, maybe you should –" he starts, but Astrid cuts him off.

"No, I – and I like your puns – and your face – and your cat, and your house, and your geeky science t-shirts, and –" She takes a deep breath, like she's steadying herself, then says, in a calmer voice, "Hiccup, I was thinking… well, I was thinking that –"

There's a loud honk from behind them, and both Hiccup and Astrid jump high enough that they hit their heads on the roof of the car. Hiccup realizes for the first time that they're parked right in the middle of a road that's mostly empty but is certainly still operational, and he carefully pulls over to let the car behind them pass before turning back to Astrid with a grin.

"Did you see that? Perfect maneuvering, right?"

Astrid blinks at him. "I, uh, yeah. Uh, yeah." She then proceeds to run her fingers through her hair and look troubled.

"Oh, right, what were you saying? About liking my face? I'd like to hear the end of that train of thought, if that's not too much to ask."

Astrid laughs shakily. "Oh, no, I was just – I was just… speculating." She sighs, apparently having lost whatever gumption had been pushing her forward before, and sinks down in her seat. "It's not important."

"It's important to you," Hiccup says, "which means it's important to me. Come on, Astrid, spill."

"It's not important to me," Astrid mutters.

"Is this the same thing you wanted to tell me last night? And the same thing that rendered you sleepless? Because, can I just say, that sounds like it's sort of important to you."

"At this point, Hiccup, you should be able to infer from context what I'm talking about."

He thinks about it. "Well, I can't."

Astrid looks disbelievingly at him. "Really? You can't? Or are you just trying to make me say it out loud?"

"Um, no. I can't."

She examines his face before seemingly determining that he is an idiot rather than a liar. She mumbles a couple sentences that Hiccup can't make out (although he picks up some phrases like straight A student and can't believe it and a few choice swear words) before saying, louder, "We should switch seats. So I can drive you home."

"Astrid…"

"Hiccup," she says firmly. "It's none of your business. Well, I mean… I mean, no, it's none of your business."

He crosses his arms huffily. "If you don't tell me then I'm driving home," he says, then takes the keys out of the ignition and sits on them before she can take them away. He's not sure when he got so bold around Astrid, but as long as she tells him what's bothering her he's not going to question it.

She glares at him, then says, "Okay, bye," and gets out of the car. Hiccup splutters for a moment before getting up, grabbing the keys, locking the car doors, and following her.

"What are you doing?" he calls after her as he tries to catch up, which is not easy when taking into account both her speed walking and his leg. Luckily, she stops to turn around and smirk at him, which allows him time to stumble his way closer to her.

"My house is only two blocks away from here, Hiccup. I'm ditching you." She starts walking again.

"But… but I can steal your car!"

"Like you would," she scoffs, having clearly called his bluff about driving himself home. The only person more terrified than Astrid at the prospect of Hiccup being behind the wheel is, well, Hiccup. He sighs and, instead of accepting defeat and giving her the keys back, keeps following her.

"Alright, then, we'll go to your place. I didn't eat lunch, do you have tuna? I haven't had any in ages, Toothless always gets to it before I can even look at it for too long, I swear that cat –"

"Are you seriously going to follow me back to my house?" Astrid asks him suddenly. He looks down at his mismatched feet for a few moments before sucking it up and making eye contact with her.

"If you're not genuinely against it, then yeah." Astrid's looking at him weird, and the atmosphere around them suddenly feels just a little too deep and serious so he tacks on, "I mean, I've only given Toothless two and a half hours to cool down, he's gonna need more time than that."

Astrid smiles at him, and just like that the mood is lifted properly. "Just how many puns did you tell him?"

"Only a few, but when it comes to bad jokes it's definitely quality over quantity. I mean, one pun can beat twenty knock knock jokes without breaking a figurative sweat."

"Hiccup," Astrid says seriously, as they keep walking side by side down the street (he's not sure why they're not just turning around for the car but, hey, he's not complaining). "Please believe me when I tell you that you are literally the only person in entire world who likes puns. The sooner you accept that the sooner you can be happy."

"You just told me you liked my puns! Like, that was literally four seconds ago. You said you liked my face and my puns and my house for some reason, which is pretty random but still totally legit."

Astrid's blushing. "I was just trying to be nice. I hate your puns, everyone hates puns."

"The only people who hate puns are kleptomaniacs, Astrid. Are you a kleptomaniac?"

"What? No, why would you say that? What does that even mean?"

"It's a simple fact, Astrid. The earth is round, the sun is bright, and kleptomaniacs hate puns."

She sighs. "I know I'm going to regret asking this, Hiccup, but why do kleptomaniacs hate puns?"

He beams at her. "Because they always take things, literally." Astrid groans loud enough to make a dog start barking, and Hiccup breaks down laughing.

"I don't know why I even talk to you."

"Me neither," he confesses, and they spend the rest of the walk in comfortable silence, with Hiccup taking occasional glances down at her hand and resisting taking it in his own for fear of losing another, more vital limb.

It's hard.

… … …

Hiccup gets knocked to the ground the second he walks in through the front door of Astrid's house, and for one crazy moment he thinks they've just stumbled upon a home invasion and now the robbers are getting rid of the accidental witnesses. Then a tongue starts licking his face and Hiccup remembers why he owns a cat and not a dog.

"Stormfly! Stormfly, down, I mean – up, come on, Stormfly." The dog – a kind of bluish greyhound, he realizes, as it abandons its task of finding out what his eyeballs taste like – trots over to Astrid and wags its tail like it's just done something praiseworthy. Hiccup wonders if she trained it to attack innocent one-legged passerbys.

"I'm sorry," Astrid says, despite looking like she's about to burst out laughing. Oh, so his puns aren't funny, but this is? What else is amusing to her, plague? Famine? Terminal illnesses? Would she find it hilarious if someone actually slipped on a banana peel and suffered brain hemorrhaging that led to eventual death? Wait, no, don't answer that.

"S'okay," he lies, wiping his face off with the edge of his sleeve. Well, this shirt's going in the trash. "That your dog?"

"Uh-huh. I've only had her a few months, she's grown pretty fast."

"No kidding," Hiccup mutters, finally getting up off the floor and freezing when the movement attracts the dog's attention back onto him. It – okay, she – stares at him for a moment before apparently deciding he's not interesting and going back to either trying to hug Astrid or trying to kill her. Hiccup is both relieved and insulted.

"I, uh… I didn't see her last time I was here," he says, watching with wide eyes as the dog starts licking Astrid's shirt. He's… a tiny bit jealous, which is definitely the weirdest and most horrifying thought that has ever crossed his mind, but mostly he's just wondering if that dog spit is ever going to wash out. He doesn't think so.

"I hid her up in my room, I didn't think you'd appreciate getting mauled by her." Astrid is such an intuitive person. "But I didn't know you'd be coming over today, so I didn't think I had anything to worry about."

"Yeah. Hey, what was her name? Stormy?"

"Stormfly," Astrid corrects. Hiccup muffles a laugh.

"You… you named your dog Stormfly?"

"Excuse me, you named your cat Toothless. You have no right to judge me."

"Well, in all technicalities, his name is Night Fury. I never officially changed it. But he's about as harmless as an animal with only gums and, besides, whenever he attacks me he only uses his claws. Never his teeth. So Toothless."

Astrid laughs. "So your cat is harmless but attacks you? That's kind of contradictory, Hayden."

Hiccup whistles lowly. "Whoa, we're cutting deep now. What'd I do?"

"I'm just saying, since you hate ridiculous names so much I should probably stop calling you Hiccup."

"Hey, that's different. I didn't choose that nickname."

"Yes, you did!" Astrid says accusingly, gesturing to him wildly. "I remember because that's how you introduced yourself on the first day of kindergarten and everybody looked at you weird!"

"My mom gave it to me before I could even talk! I hiccupped for, like, two weeks straight when I was a baby and it was great for her because it meant I couldn't really cry."

This is… pretty much true. Hiccup really had been simply a nickname until Snotlout had for some reason looked up the definition in third grade and found out that it could mean not only a small, involuntary spasm of the diaphragm followed by the quick closing of the vocal chords but also a slight irregularity, error, or malfunction – aka, a mistake. The term Hiccup was a mortally offensive insult by the end of the week and Hiccup had found himself bullied worse than ever.

But Astrid doesn't need to know that.

"And you kept it?" she asks incredulously. Hiccup is offended.

"It stuck!" He'd actually meant to introduce himself as Hayden on the first day of kindergarten, but Hiccup had slipped out and there'd been no going back from it. Ah, well, he's used to it anyway. And it's still so much better than Snotlout. "At it least it has a reason behind it. Please enlighten me as to what Stormfly means.

"Easy. She hates storms."

Hiccup puts a hand to his chest. "Oh, gods! So clever! So unpredictable! So ingeniously creative in its –"

Astrid slaps him upside the arm, and he winces more from the fact that her hand is covered in dog slobber than from pain. Make no mistake, though, he is in pain. "Shut up, Hiccup."

"See! It sticks!"

"She always runs around the house when it's raining," Astrid says, as if he hadn't spoken at all. Rude. "She flies up and down the stairs all panicky so I named her Stormfly."

"Well, it's not horrible," Hiccup concedes. "Especially for someone who's never had nickname experience before."

"There's not a lot you can do with Astrid."

"There's not a lot you can do with Hayden, you've gotta improvise." He grins at her. "You know what, I'm going to call you Ass from now on. It fits you perfectly."

"Screw you, Hiccup." It's friendly enough that Hiccup doesn't slink off to the corners of a dark room with his metaphorical tail tucked between his legs.

"What, you don't like it?"

"What do you think?"

"Okay, fine. As a lazy tailor would say, 'suit yourself'."

Astrid sighs loudly. Stormfly smiles at him in that way dogs smile, and Hiccup decides he likes her despite the dog spit. It's not like Toothless doesn't start grooming his hair right after he gets out of the shower every morning; he can handle a little unhygienic slobber.

"You know, Toothless hates storms, too," Hiccup says, as he bends down awkwardly to pet her dog. He's wearing old jeans and he hopes to the gods that they don't split because Astrid will never ever ever let him live it down and he won't even be able to blame her because, well, that's the kind of thing you don't let people live down. Please, Freya, please, I don't ask for much…

"Does he?" Astrid says, in a dazed sort of voice. Hiccup looks up at her, and her eyes snap to his face like they'd been focused elsewhere before. He shrugs it off.

"Yeah. He doesn't mind the rain or anything, just… storms. Thunder. He knocks stuff off my shelves and yowls a lot. Hence the unofficial title 'The Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death Itself'."

"Uh-huh," Astrid says, still sounding preoccupied. Hiccup stands up (Stormfly looks like she's going to die of over-excitement if he pets her for too much longer) and Astrid seems to regain control of… whatever it was that she'd lost control of. "That's interesting. "

"Yeah. It sucks, though, because I love rain and Toothless makes it totally impossible to enjoy."

"I hate rain," Astrid says bluntly. "It means I can't do sports." Her use of the phrase do sports makes him think she's still a little distracted but, hey, it still beats his terminology on the topic.

Hiccup laughs. "Of course it does. Well, I like it."

"Why?"

"I dunno, I just like it."

"For no reason?"

"Well…" He hesitates. "When… it's raining, I feel like my house can't catch on fire. Which is stupid because lightning could totally strike it or something but I just… sleep easier. Knowing the rain would put out the flames or whatever."

Astrid looks at him in a way he can't decipher, so he jumps onto another topic. "Sometimes I wonder if it's the opposite for Toothless. Like, I have no idea how he lost his leg, for all I know he could've been born without one, but sometimes I think it got shot and they had to amputate it or something. And that's why hates storms. Because the thunder reminds him of gunshots. And gunshots remind him of losing his leg. I mean, I can't even be near a candle without freaking out so I… get it. I mean. If that's the case. Which it's probably not." Gods, he's rambling. Astrid's still looking at him weird, and he closes his eyes and curses himself to Valhalla.

"You know," she says after a moment. "You could probably ask the place you got him from about it. If they amputated his leg, they'll probably remember him or have records of it or something. You could find out what kind of injury it was. If it was an injury."

Hiccup smiles at her, because… well, because she sounds like she cares. For real cares. About his cat. "I've thought about that. But… if Toothless wanted me to know, he would tell me."

Astrid's tone goes from comforting and helpful to disbelieving in a fraction of a second. "He would tell you?"

"Well… yeah. I mean, not in the traditional sense –"

"What, so he'd use nerd-telepathy to send the information to you mentally?"

"Of course not!" Hiccup says, scandalized. "He'd use cripple-telepathy, don't you know anything? All living things with missing limbs have synced brain waves, it's a biological fact. I honestly can't believe you have the audacity to refer to yourself a science nerd when you don't even know about cripple-telepathy."

"You are an idiot," Astrid announces. "And also not a cripple, don't call yourself that. Just ask the damn cat why he hates thunderstorms if you're sure you can do it."

"That's his business."

"And you can't talk to cats."

"Of course I can't, that's impossible. But three-legged cats…"

Astrid shoves his shoulder. "I think you need to study more. Since you're here, why don't we work on the project?"

"Sounds good," he says, and follows her as she starts heading towards the kitchen "Hey, I was thinking that instead of a powerpoint we could actually use a whiteboard?"

Astrid stops in her tracks, then slowly turns around. "You want to scrap the visuals we've been working on, throw away the animation you've already started, and revert back to the type of presentation used when my mother was our age?"

"Your mom's not that old," Hiccup offers. Astrid looks like she's about to start yelling at him, so he adds, "Well, then, I take it you're not on board with that idea?"

Astrid pauses, then groans. He makes her groan a lot, he's noticed (ignore innuendos ignore innuendos IGNORE INNUENDOS). "Did you really suggest that just to make a half-decent pun about whiteboards?"

"No, actually, I'd like to use a whiteboard. I love them. I think they're… remarkable." He busts out laughing. "Get it, they're literally remarkable –"

"I got it," Astrid says, wearing a stern expression that doesn't quite match the note of amusement in her voice. "Sit down before you hurt yourself."

"Okay, fine," he says, and they work on their project for the next hour and a half. They're actually really close to being done now – a little more research and a little more work on the powerpoint (Astrid really does firmly reject the whiteboard idea despite his argument for it) and voila, no more hanging out after school every day… and apparently on weekends. They've still got to work on the specifics of their speech and Astrid will surely check up on him regularly to see how his basically-flip-book animation is going, but other than that… nothing. Nada. They'll see each other in the halls, and in classes, and he still has her phone number and she'll maybe even keep giving him driving lessons but… he doubts it. She's Astrid.

At a quarter till five, Astrid shuts her laptop and gets up. "I think that's it for the day. Want a popsicle?"

"A popsicle?" He hasn't had a popsicle since… since elementary school.

"Well, yeah. I'm not really willing to hand over a fudgesicle, so. Take it or leave it."

"I'll take it," Hiccup laughs, and catches it when she throws it to him. He catches it! He grins goofily at her as he does so, and Astrid offers him a sarcastic round of applause before sitting back down and propping her feet up on the table. She does that a lot; he wonders if it's just an Astrid-thing. 2 cool 4 floors.

"So," she says, licking her fudgesicle in a way that makes him look very very deliberately at the ceiling. He's horrible, honestly. "How 'bout those Harry Potter jokes that were supposed to leave me spellbound?"

He looks back at her so that she can see his excitement more properly. "Really? You want to hear one?"

"Sure."

"You're not just pulling my leg?"

"I want Harry Potter jokes, Hiccup, not leg jokes."

"Okay. Okay. Are you ready for this?"

Astrid looks amused. "I'm ready."

"Okay. Book four spoilers. Why did Barty Crouch Jr. stop drinking?"

Astrid ponders it, then shrugs. "I dunno, why?"

"Because it was making him Moody!" He performs his typical haha my joke was so funny laugh afterwards, but to his surprise, Astrid joins in with him.

"That was actually pretty good," she says, once they're finished giggling like idiots. "I haven't heard that one."

"I have some great pickup lines, too," he offers.

"Lay 'em on me."

"Okay. If you were a dementor, I'd become a criminal just to get your kiss." Astrid snorts, which he thinks is promising. "And if you were a basilisk, I'd die just to look into your eyes."

"Those are just awful. I had no idea you were such a Harry Potter nerd."

He refrains from telling her that they're both true… in the figurative sense, because neither dementors nor basilisks are real and even if they were Astrid would not be one of them. "I love Harry Potter."

"Me too," she says, smiling at him in a way that's not because of his puns anymore. He smiles back. "Hiccup… about… what I was trying to tell you earlier…"

"Yeah?" Why is his heart beating so fast? He's got this… this crazy idea… about what Astrid wants to tell him, and it can't possibly be true but the way she's looking at him is just – just indescribable. It's like – it makes him think he's not wrong. About what he's thinking. Even though he is.

"Well… I was going to –" The front door of the house opening cuts her off, and Hiccup nearly groans out loud. Seriously? What the heck, Odin? You dick.

"That must be my mom," Astrid says, jumping up from the table. Hiccup resists the urge to grab her hand and pull her back down to her seat. Or to his seat.

Sure enough, a blonde, older version of Astrid walks into the kitchen moments later. "Oh, hey, Astrid, I didn't know you were home, I didn't see your car out front. Who's this?"

"Um, Mom, this is H – Hayden. This is Hayden."

"Hi," Hiccup (who is not Hayden, they discussed this earlier) says. "We're working on a science project together." Why did you come home now I hate you you are a horrible human being through no fault of your own.

"Oh, yes, that. Astrid told me about that, yeah." There's an awkward moment of silence after that, in which Astrid tugs on her hair and Hiccup shuffles his feet until he realizes he's making his fake leg clink-tap and stops.

"I should get going, then," Hiccup says eventually. "See you Monday, Astrid?"

"Yeah. Oh, yeah, let me give you a ride home."

"That's okay, I think I need to take a walk," he says honestly. His head could use some serious clearing right about now.

"Okay, well…" Astrid bites her lip as she stares at him. "I have to go get my car from where it's parked, can I come with you until we get there?"

"Sure," Hiccup says, and waves stupidly at her mom before leaving the kitchen with Astrid. The second they're out the front door, he says, "So what were you going to tell me?"

"Nothing," Astrid sighs, looking resigned. Hiccup groans.

"Come on, Astrid, not this agai–"

"Hiccup," she says firmly. "There comes a point where, when you get interrupted that many times, you figure the gods are against you."

Hey, angsting over the gods being jerks is his thing. "Or it's just a coincidence."

"Or they really think I'm being an idiot and are trying their best to shut me up."

"…Or it's just a coincidence."

"Hiccup, just – ssh. Enjoy the day."

And so he does. They walk in silence until they reach the car, the clink-tap of his leg comfortable and normal between them, and he hands her the keys that are still in his back pocket once they're a few feet away from her destination.

"You sure you don't want a ride?" she asks him as she gets in the car. He nods and smiles at her.

"I'm sure. Enjoying the day, remember? And, Astrid… if you don't want to tell me that thing that's bothering you, tell someone."

Astrid looks at him. "I don't think there's anyone else to tell," she says quietly, then slams the door shut and starts the car. Hiccup admires the graceful way she turns to corner but hates that she does it so quickly. He hates that she's no longer in sight.

He hates that she's driving away.

 _late? yes. my fault? nooooooo i swear. I posted the last chapter from my mom's computer because the internet on mine wasn't working but I thought it wouldn't be a big deal and my dad the computer programer could fix it but... HE COULDN'T. it just doesn't WORK so I've had no web access for over a week because my mom wouldn't let me on her computer again but today I finally cracked the password (my grandpa's name and year he was born if u care) so yaay! here i am! college starts up monday and they have a computer lab so there should be no more stalled updates after that :p really sorry for the wait! especially since this chapter sucked so hard (seems to be a pattern) aaargh_

 _okay. but. 59 reviews for my last chapter? I had no internet access for a WEEK so imagine my gasps when I logged into my email and found pure beauty. like you guys are amazing the first thing I'm gonna do monday is reply to ALL OF YOU seriously I love you so much it's RIDIC see u soon! xoxo Jolly_


	9. Chapter 9

Astrid Hofferson is a coward.

You wouldn't know it by looking at her, or by talking to her, or by getting to know her on a very close and intimate level, but it's true. She is a complete and utter wuss, when it comes right down to it, and it's not because she's not lacking in physical prowess or strength of will or even any sort of courageousness. She wishes she was lacking in those areas, she wishes those were her problems, because then she could just beat them right out of herself with training and hard work and determination and it would be over just like that. No harm done, life goes on, burgers on the way home?

But that's not the case, because Astrid flippin' Hofferson doesn't have those minuscule, mind-numbingly simple problems. She has emotional problems, which for the record are about a hundred thousand times worse. How do you fix emotional problems, anyway? Her usual methods of repression and avoidance don't seem to be working. Perhaps years of professional therapy and trust exercises might help, but Astrid has neither the time nor the patience to talk about her feelings at length to some quack who doesn't actually care and look at inkblots that all probably symbolize love or acceptance or daddy issues or something.

Astrid sighs. She can't help but think, as she looks up at the ceiling and curses the gods and herself and Hiccup (mostly Hiccup), that therein lies the problem. She doesn't want to talk about her feelings, because she doesn't like talking about her feelings, and so she's going have trouble expressing herself and opening up to people until the day she dies. Which wouldn't be a problem, really, because that's kind of the way she prefers it, but then…

Then there's Hiccup. The guy whose name she's been cursing up and down the Archipelago ever since they'd been paired on that stupid project together (though louder and more frequently since she'd realized the dates of their timers zeroing out matched up). He makes her – and this is embarrassing, really, it is – he makes her want to talk about her feelings, for once. He makes her feel stupid and lightheaded and dizzy to the point where it's actually sort of medically alarming, and she wants to tell him everything not only about what she feels but about who she is. She wants him to know exactly who she is and exactly who she plans to be and exactly how much she finds herself craving his presence in random moments, like earlier that evening when she'd been doing her homework and had just wished that he'd been next to her, not to help her or talk to her but to just be there. She wants him to know Astrid Hofferson like the back of his hand, assuming that Hiccup knows the back of his hand at all, because he's exactly the kind of absentminded idiot who might not even be aware of the positions of his own wrist freckles.

She wants to tell him all this, she wants to tell him just how much of an emotional wreck he's turned her into, but she just doesn't… know… how. It's frustrating, to put it mildly, and when Astrid is frustrated she likes to punch people.

But she doesn't like to punch Hiccup.

Aargh, see? See? It's so confusing, and Astrid shoves her pillow over her head in the hopes that it will not only shut out Stormfly's pitiful whining but also cool her absolutely burning face (she's not sure if it's hot from embarrassment or anger or both). It's storming outside, and that immediately brings her mind back to her conversation with Hiccup earlier that day about how both their pets hate thunder and then she's thinking about him again (oh, wait, she'd never stopped) and groaning so loudly and irately into her bedspread that the muffled noise is enough to get Stormfly even more worked up than she'd been before. Astrid sighs guiltily and pats the bed to beckon her dog towards her – she's never too frustrated for Stormfly – and the greyhound hops up and tucks her head under Astrid's hand.

Astrid starts petting her absentmindedly, and can't help but stare at her soulmate timer as brushes Stormfly's fur loosely every time she runs her fingers up and down the dog's back. It's gold, and on her right hand, just like both of her parents' timers. Hiccup's is silver and on his left. There's not exactly any correlation between your timer and your soulmate's timer's color and position – that is, she and Hiccup could still definitely be soulmates even though their watches are so different – but it feels like a bad sign anyway. Her parents' timers are the same, and her parents are perfect, and she wants that, so it stands to reason that even something as small as how Hiccup's timer looks could be proof that they're not meant to be together. They're just too different, evidenced not only by their timers but by their abilities and their interests and their number of limbs. She recites it in her head – "we're too different, we're too different, we're too different" – over and over until it makes sense.

And it does make sense.

…Except that she likes that Hiccup's soulmate timer is silver. She like the way it clashes against hers; she likes that if they were to press their wrists together that they wouldn't blend. They'd stand out against each other; they'd bring out the color in one another; they'd make each other shine to their fullest potential. And the fact that Hiccup's soulmate timer is on his left hand and hers is on her right means that every time they held hands (you know, if they ever did hold hands), their timers would be right next to each other and they'd probably touch and constantly clink into each other and that… that would mean something. She doesn't know what it would mean, she hasn't the faintest idea, but it would mean something. She just… she doesn't… it would mean something.

She knows it.

And she likes that Hiccup is different from her. It's stupid, because she knows that being nearly identical has worked out amazingly for her parents, but she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with someone who's the same as her. She doesn't want to agree on everything and always be on the same page and be constantly at ease, because that… that sounds miserable. She knows that her parents love it, that they're the happiest couple that she's ever seen, but she can't help but feel like that just wouldn't work for her. She wants someone who has enough in common with her for them to bond but is their own unique person who has different opinions and hobbies and points of view. She wants someone who keeps her own her toes, who tells jokes that make her want to kill herself and sucks at almost all the things she's good at and acts like a total nerd but also somehow pulls off being attractive. She wants someone who isn't a carbon copy of herself.

Right now, though – and maybe it's just a teenage crush and it will pass in no time, even though it really doesn't feel like it – right now, she wants Hiccup.

And wanting Hiccup makes a lot less sense than her mantra of them being too different, but it somehow feels better to her. In her gut. Astrid likes to rely on her gut. Sure, her primary sources of decision-making are her intelligence and her reasoning skills, but she likes to think that she has a certain amount of natural instinct to fall back on when things get tough. And somehow, even though her life is relatively simple in the grand scheme of things right now, everything feels tougher than it ever has been before.

Astrid sighs and rolls over onto her stomach, Stormfly tucked safely under her arm, and eventually falls into a sleep plagued by dreams of green eyes and drawings of dragons. She says plagued as a last-ditch attempt, of sorts: as a hope to convince herself that these images are bad things rather than good. As a mental way of reminding herself that they are negative by opting for a negative word to describe their presence.

But she's smart enough to know that the warm sensation she feels curling down to her toes as she wakes up isn't just from the dog at her side.

… … …

As it turns out, Astrid's heated face the night before wasn't from embarrassment or anger – it was from being sick. Well, okay, it was probably also from those other things, but the thermometer reading 100.1 degrees the next morning tells her it's definitely got something to do with a fever.

Astrid pushes Stormfly away from her gently, feeling plenty hot enough without the splendid addition of a living breathing heater pressed against her side, and waits for her mom to come back upstairs. She's currently making a phone call to the school to inform them that Astrid won't be coming into class today, and the seventeen year old can't help but feel strangely disappointed. No school equals no Hiccup, and no Hiccup equals no puns or nerdiness or staring at his –

She shakes her head firmly to dispel her thoughts, and regrets the motion when it jostles the headache that's blooming near her temple. Uurgh. Astrid lies down and tries not to wallow in self-pity about just how miserable her life is right now, as well as convince herself that a day (or week, how sick is she?) away from Hiccup will be good for her, but it's hard when the image of his goofy, lopsided smile keeps popping up into her head.

Her mom peeks her head in through the doorway. "I'm sorry, Astrid, but I can't get the day off to stay home with you. Will you be alright by yourself?"

"Sure," Astrid replies, as she halfheartedly attempts to stop her dog from cuddling back up with her. "Can you take Stormfly out before you leave?"

"Of course." Her mom whistles beckoningly, and Stormfly offers Astrid one last loving look before she bounds across the room and out the door. Astrid can't help but smile, because there's nothing like the never-ending adoration and loyalty of a dog to perk up someone sick… except for perhaps the snarky superiority of a three-legged cat.

Astrid groans again and sticks her face in her pillow, ignoring the fact that the position makes it harder for her to breathe through her already stuffed up nose. She'd rather be sick every day for the rest of her life than deal with this… this affliction. This affliction of affection. This seriously nasty case of the Hiccups.

The fever Astrid's developed has clearly altered the mental functioning of her brain, because she's suddenly struck with the ridiculous idea that she legitimately has the Hiccups. She drags herself out of bed and towards her laptop, then accordingly spends the majority of her morning researching and acting out various methods of curing the hiccups in the hopes that they'll somehow help her get over her crush. She swallows a spoonful of sugar, tickles the roof of her mouth with a cotton ball, puts her fingers in her ears for half an hour, drinks a glass of water upside down (not easy when you're sick), and even holds her breath until she nearly passes out, but alas, to no avail. The exact shade of green that Hiccup's eyes are is still her favorite color and she still wants to trace out and categorize every single one of the freckles on his face. With her tongue. It sounds like a difficult task, but Astrid Hofferson is always up for a challenge.

She gives up on her completely insane scheme around one o'clock, and spends the rest of the afternoon focusing determinedly on not thinking about Hiccup. Which doesn't work out very well. She goes into the kitchen and instantly flashes back to the two of them doing their project in there. She watches a movie with cute guys and, oh, crap, Hiccup is a cute guy. She lies down on the couch and hey, wait a second, Hiccup also has a couch. Coincidence? She thinks not.

Her eyes hurt, but she goes on her laptop anyway in the hopes of distracting herself from her… ahem, issue. She entertains herself by going through old pictures on Facebook of Ruffnut and Tuffnut causing trouble, then plays platform flash games online for a while even though she's terrible at them. Hiccup's such a nerd, he'd probably know not only how to work them but how to hack them…

She shakes her head and switches to digital mini-putt golf, which is sporty enough that she doubts Hiccup has ever even heard of it. She ends up beating the game with ten under the final score par (is it weird how proud she is of that?) and then takes a while to browse aimlessly through her Twitter feed, until the system craps up and an error message appears:

Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again.

Astrid groans. She'd actually been thinking about other things for a while there (well, kind of) before Twitter had to get all up in her biz and ruin it for her. She considers deleting her account as retribution, but eventually decides that her thoughts would have found their way back to Hiccup eventually anyways and the social networking site shouldn't suffer the truly awful fate of not having Astrid Hofferson in their system just because of the wording of their error message.

The damage is done, though. Hiccup is at the forefront of her mind and not going anywhere. She closes her laptop and pushes it far, far away from her, but not before glancing at the time and noticing that it's four o'clock.

School is out now. It's been out for quite a while, plenty long enough for Hiccup to walk home and maybe even get started on his homework. He's probably sitting at his desk right now, working on some advanced Algebra problems or an English essay or maybe just doodling random drawings of dragons. Or maybe he's drawing his cat. Or new prosthesis designs. Or her.

What if he's drawing her?

Astrid breathes in and out slowly in a futile attempt to calm her racing heartbeat. Of course Hiccup isn't drawing her, she's never seen him draw a person in her life. Hiccup draws animals and mechanical things. She is not an animal or a mechanical thing.

Maybe he's working on their project. Maybe he's chewing on the end of a pencil right now, wondering why she wasn't at school and trying to work up the nerve to text her and ask why. That sounds like a Hiccup thing to do.

Before she even really knows what she's doing, Astrid is picking up her cell phone front the coffee table in front of her and selecting Hiccup's name in her address book. She's about to start typing him a message, but she switches gears at the last moment and ends up pressing the dial button instead.

It rings four times before there's a muffled, "Hello?" from the other end of the line. He sounds tired, and Astrid instantly feels guilty. But also good. Because Hiccup's voice is good.

"Did I wake you?" she asks, instead of announcing her identity as proper phone etiquette dictates. It's not like he doesn't have caller ID or whatever, but… still.

"Astrid?" Hiccup says, and there's a rustling noise that sounds like he's sitting up in bed.

"Yeah."

"Oh. Um, hi. No, you didn't – I was up already." Hiccup's a terrible liar, even over the phone, but he sounds kind of excited about the fact that she's calling him so she decides not to press the matter.

"Well… I was just… calling because… I mean, you're probably wondering why I wasn't at school today, and –"

"You weren't at school today?" Hiccup questions, and Astrid's heart plummets about six stories downwards. He hadn't even noticed. Here she is, spending a whole day practically forcing herself not to think about him, and he hadn't realized she wasn't in class.

"Um. Yeah. I'm sick."

"Same here!" Hiccup says, sounding relatively excited. "I was worried you were gonna be mad at me for skipping out or something, but this is awesome."

Oh. So. Hiccup hadn't been at school either. That's better. And then she realizes that soulmates almost always catch illnesses in sync, and that's even better. "So you're happy that I'm sick?"

Hiccup backtracks. "No, no, of course not! I just… I meant… um, well…"

She laughs, for the first time that day. "It's cool. What… what did you do today?"

"Slept, mostly. My dad keeps checking up on me every six minutes and if I'm not in bed he starts doting on me."

"Doesn't he have… mayoral duties or something?"

"Of course. But ever since the leg thing my parents have been super overprotective of me, so they wouldn't leave me here alone, and my mom can't make water without burning it so my dad volunteered. He's being ridiculous, he spelled out 'pride of berk' in my alphabet soup earlier."

Astrid can't help but smile as she imagines the mayor she knows so well, with his bushy red beard and his consistently stern expression, hunched over a counter and arranging letters in a bowl of soup with his enormous hands. "Sounds like he's embracing the fact that you're four."

"Shut up, Astrid," Hiccup says, in a voice that isn't serious. "He's probably going to come in here any second to ask who I'm talking to."

"Just say Toothless."

Hiccup laughs. "Toothless hasn't moved in hours. Dad knows I don't talk to comatose cats."

"Poke him awake, he can't be that out of it."

"Trust me, Astrid, if it weren't for his breathing I might start planning his funeral. He's… he's catatonic."

Astrid's pulls her phone away from her ear so that she can check the call time. "Wow, Hiccup, we talked for three whole minutes before you made a pun. I'm proud of you."

"Give me a break, I haven't told a joke all day. I've barely even talked. Except for when I was begging my dad to please leave me alone." There's a rustle of papers on the other end of the line, and she can tell Hiccup is shifting the phone from one ear to the other. Then there's the faint scratching of a pencil.

"What are you drawing?"

"A dragon."

Like she couldn't have guessed that. "What kind?"

"I dunno, I just started it. I think it's gonna be pretty big, though."

"And?"

"It'll have four wings, maybe?"

"And?"

"I have no idea, Astrid!" He's silent for a moment. Then: "I'm kind of just winging it."

She sighs loudly. "That was barely thirty seconds. You should be ashamed of yourself."

"Yeah, I know," Hiccup says, in a tone of voice that doesn't sound very ashamed at all. They're quiet for a while, and Astrid fights off the overwhelming urge to fall asleep to the slight sound of his sketching.

"Do you think you're going to draw when you're older?" she asks randomly, in an effort to not doze off.

"Of course I will. Why would I stop drawing?"

"No, I mean… as a career. Do you think you'll draw for a living?"

"Oh." Hiccup's sketching stills. "I don't know."

"You don't?"

"Nope." Then, softer, like he's confessing something, "I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up."

"You'll be eighteen in a month, Hiccup."

"And here I was thinking I was four." He hums lightly. "What do you want to do?"

"Be a journalist," she says easily, just like she's been saying for the last six years. Hiccup doesn't reply right away.

"I used to want to be a banker," he finally says.

"Really?"

"Yeah. But I lost interest."

"Why?"

"Astrid," Hiccup says laughingly, "I used to want to be a banker, but I lost interest." More silence. "Get it? It's a pun. Because –"

"Yeah, I got it," Astrid grumbles, half-irritated, half-amused. Hiccup clearly has issues. Endearing issues. "Do you have any real career goals?"

"Well, I like building things," Hiccup says musingly. "I could be a watchmaker."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Because…" he stops for a minute to laugh. "Because I could make my own hours."

"You're not funny." She'd probably sound a little more convincing if she wasn't laughing too.

"Come on, that one was pretty good."

"No, it wasn't."

"Ah, well," he sighs. "It's for the best. I hear people who make clocks sometimes go cuckoo."

"Hiccup, I'm going to drive over to your house and punch you."

"Okay, okay, but seriously. I'd like to be an osteologist, I think."

"Someone who studies bones?" She can't think of how there could be a pun hidden in that, but if anyone could find it, it would be Hiccup.

"Yeah. I dunno, when I was in the hospital it was kind of… fascinating. Looking at my x-rays and stuff. It'd just be cool." Astrid's decided he's being legitimately serious right now, but then he says, "I think it's fate, really. I can feel it in my bones."

Astrid wonders for the billionth time why she likes this guy again, and scratches her itchy wrist. She really hopes she isn't coming down with a rash on top of everything else. "I hate you."

"So you've said," Hiccup says, in a voice infinitely too smug for him. She decides she likes how at ease with her he is right now. It's probably got something to do with his being sick.

She's about to cuss him out in an effort to prove that she really does hate him (even though, you know, she doesn't), but then he says, "Ah, crap, my dad's coming."

"How do you know?"

"Astrid, he weighs four hundred pounds. I can hear him stomping up the stairs. Talk to you later?"

She loves the implication of later more than she should. "Later," she agrees, and shuts her cellphone before she can say anything else. Anything embarrassing.

Astrid goes back to scratching her wrist and thinks about things. She just… she thinks. About why she likes Hiccup. About why she craves his presence and his puns and his existence. There's no reason. No logical one, in any case.

Her wrist is really starting to bother her, and she takes off her timer so that she can scratch at it more thoroughly. But the itch disappears the moment her watch is away from her skin.

And then her breath catches.

She turns her timer over, and there they are. Her words, in plain cursive writing, clear and beautiful and real.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.

… … …

Three days later, Astrid is well enough to return to school. She and Hiccup talk a little bit during their time off, but it's not for long and it's usually about their project. Astrid doesn't sleep much.

It can't… it can't be a coincidence. It can't be. Those… that… Hiccup is her soulmate. The words prove it, more firmly and impossibly than anything else ever could. And more than that, she likes him. Maybe even more than likes him. And, really, nothing else but that matters.

Astrid makes her way through the halls, and there he is. The very person who's been keeping her up all night for weeks. She can still see the slight remnants of his illness: with red-rimmed eyes and hair that's slightly more tousled than usual, you can tell he's been sick, but Astrid decides he still looks great. Actually, she thinks, as he scrubs a hand over his face and sniffles a little bit, he looks even better than usual. Jerk.

She watches as Snotlout pushes Hiccup absentmindedly into his locker as he passes, and Astrid makes a mental note to kick his ass for that later. Hiccup seems far less aggravated than she feels, as he just rolls his eyes and continues to shove his books into his already overstuffed backpack without so much as an inflammatory hand gesture towards his cousin. She's caught him doing that before.

And Astrid thinks, now.

She's there. He's there. Class doesn't start for another five minutes, which is actually great because it gives her enough time to tell him but not so much time that she has to stand there awkwardly in his presence for ages afterwards. She's ready, and she's… like, 73% percent sure that she's right. About the soulmate thing. And 73% is totally a passing grade. Sure, it's a C (in some grading systems it's even a C-minus) but even though it might drag her GPA down quite a bit and totally ruin her chances of graduating as salutatorian, it's still completely legitimate and she's ready to take that chance.

Her palms feel sweaty as she steps determinedly towards him. It's probably because she's getting sick again. It's certainly not because she's nervous.

Well. It could be.

She ignores the thought, though. She's doing it this time. She's sure this time. This time, for sure.

"Hey," she says to him, and Hiccup fumbles with his Ancient History book but doesn't drop it. Astrid considers this progress.

"Oh, hey, Astrid," he greets her, once he's regained the little composure he'd had in the first place. "I didn't see you there."

"Yeah," she says, and hates that her throat feels so dry. She's definitely re-catching the flu. "I, um… you alright?" She gestures vaguely towards his shoulder, which had received the brunt of the impact from Snotlout's shoving, and Hiccup smiles at her in a way that adds an accelerated heart rate to her list of symptoms.

"I'm fine. I don't think his heart was really in it, it didn't hurt half as much as usual."

"Right," Astrid replies, undoubtedly sounding like an idiot as she utters monosyllabic sentences at him over and over again. That's, like, what, her third? "I, um… you feeling better?"

"Yeah, much. You?"

"Great," she says, and inhales deeply. "Listen, Hiccup, I have to tell you something."

Hiccup bites his lip like he's refraining from saying something, and the action is so unintentionally sexy that Astrid has to lean inconspicuously against the lockers just to keep herself from falling over. A brief mental image of him biting her lip like that has her gripping the fabric of her own jeans in her hands and breathing unevenly.

Psychotic delusions, shortness of breath, lightheadedness – perhaps she's suffering from a bit more than mild fever. It could be vertigo. Or carbon monoxide poisoning. Or a benign tumor growing on the main nerve leading from her inner ear to her brain and resulting in acoustic neuroma. That sounds plausible. Oh, wait, Hiccup is talking. "Go for it."

He looks at her expectantly, and Astrid knows he's waiting for her to tell him what she's been trying to say for the past couple of days. She opens her mouth to comply, and is about to finally finally tell him about her feelings and her timer and her quote or maybe just skip all of the above and kiss him (that sounds like her style) when someone taps her on the shoulder.

Astrid turns around. She doesn't see anything at first, but then someone clears their throat and Astrid looks down. There's an incredibly tiny girl there with wild blonde hair and a mischievous glint in her blue eyes – Astrid wonders if she's some expert prankster who's escaped from a nearby middle school to wreak havoc here or something.

"Excuse me," the girl says, and kind of pushes past Astrid in a way that isn't rude but also isn't particularly polite. "What's your name?" she asks Hiccup.

Hiccup looks the girl, then at Astrid, then at the girl again. "Um, Hic– Hayden. It's Hayden. Haddock. Hayden Harrison Haddock. The Third."

Astrid can't help but do a mental face palm. Who on earth introduces themself as Hayden Harrison Haddock the Third? She's half in love with the guy and even she can admit how incredibly nerdy that is.

Good thing she likes nerds.

The girl doesn't look too put off, though; just nods and extends her hand. Hiccup – or should she say Hayden Harrison Haddock the Third – shakes it.

"I'm Cami," the girl announces, grinning brightly. Astrid gives Hiccup a look, like, see? That's how you tell someone your name. Hiccup's fairly good at recognizing unspoken communication, probably because of all the time he's spent with his cat, and he seems to get her message. He looks down at his shoes (shoe) with lightly pink-tinged cheeks, and Astrid can't help smiling.

"I, uh," Hiccup says, eloquent as always. "Did you, uh – did you need something?"

"Well, Hayden," the girl – Cami – says, "I was wondering if you wanted to meet up today after school. You know, like a date."

Astrid's not smiling anymore. Her head snaps away from Hiccup and towards…. Cami, who really does look nice enough but is clearly embodiment of evil. Who on earth does she think she is, walking up to a random stranger who just so happens to be Hiccup and asking him out? Hiccup says, more articulate than ever, "I, um, it – uh, you, I, um, er, uh, well… um, why?"

Astrid resists clapping sarcastically for that real masterpiece of a sentence, but mostly she's putting all of her self-control into not punching Cami in the face. And into not dragging Hiccup off into some supply closet to have her way with him. And then she'd command him to talk dirty to her so that she could watch him stutter and she'd bite that awesome collarbone of his and maybe even do some horrifyingly kinky things with his prosthetic leg and –

Yeah, okay, she's still sick.

"Because," Cami says, not only snapping Astrid out of her distracted thoughts but also sending her world crashing down around her, "I think my timer just zeroed out on you."

… … …

 _sorry 'bout the uber long wait here guys, didn't have internet access at college like I thought I would and dad was being a real berk (httyd reference or just a british insult? u may never know) about getting my internet fixed but now it's on and my random schedule of an update every 2-3 days shall return. sucks that u guys had to wait forever for such a lousy chap with few puns bc I needed to move the plot forward but I comfort myself with the knowledge that I'm the only one that truly cares 'bout this story :) and as always SO sorry for typos_

 _I got over 130 reviews for the last two chapters alone so… you guys are frickin incredible… hopefully I responded to u all… catch y'all on the flipside (whatever that means) xo jolly p.s. my cliffhangers suuuuck_


	10. Chapter 10

The first thing Hiccup can think to say in response to the girl is, "Are you sure it was me?" Ugh. How original.

The girl – was it Cami? he's a bit too thrown off to remember – smiles at him. She… has a nice smile. Very wide. "Is your timer zeroed out?"

"Well… well, yes, but not the way you're–"

"Then who else could it be?"

He looks around the hallway. It's almost empty at this point, but… but surely it can't be him. He can't find his soulmate today, right now, half-sick and in a situation so bizarre that it doesn't even feel real. "I, uh… um, it could be… Astrid?"

He's not sure if he's handing the question off to Astrid or actually suggesting that maybe she's this girl's soulmate, but either way, she doesn't react. She just… stands there, in stony silence, her mouth a hard line. She'd been all jittery and panicked a few seconds ago, and he hadn't liked that, but now she's straight-backed and rigid and he doesn't like that either. He really doesn't like that.

His eyes are focused on the firm clench of Astrid's jaw – is she grinding her teeth? – until a loud laugh at his side snaps his gaze back onto the girl. Her name is definitely Cami, he decides, as he evaluates her laugh. It's not a giggle, or a guffaw, it's just… a laugh. A generic, run-of-the-mill laugh. It's pleasant, but doesn't inspire any particular sense of joy or accomplishment in him.

Not like Astrid's.

"You're funny, Hayden," Cami says, and he furrows his brow. Had he said something funny? He can't remember. "I can tell I'm going to like you."

"…Oh," he says, and vaguely registers the fact that he's probably coming off as a total idiot. He just – he can barely even process this. "I – I have class…"

"Me too," Cami says brightly. "You want to skip?"

"No!" he blurts, probably too quickly. "Um, I mean… we could meet up? After?"

"Sure," she says, and starts digging around in her backpack for something. Hiccup takes advantage of the moment to note how short she is – he's at least a foot taller – before she pulls out a pen.

"Hand?" she prompts, and he gives her his left, thinking she's going to check his timer for confirmation or something. Instead, she writes her cell phone number on his palm before offering him one last huge smile and flouncing away.

No, really. She flounces. She's got a spring in her step that Hiccup can only guess is from just having found her soulmate – or at least thinking she has, because he's still not sure if this makes any sense – and he watches her messy hair bounce against her back as she makes her way down the hallway and eventually disappears at a corner.

"Wow," he says aloud, and turns to Astrid to… well, he's not sure what he turns to her to do. Gape at her? Ask her if she can believe what just happened? Beg her to please please please call Cami for him because he's not sure if he has the nerve to do it?

It doesn't matter, though, because when he turns around, Astrid's not there. Huh. She must've snuck off at some point when he'd been stuttering and stumbling and basically having a heart attack, which was a little rude of her. She must've been worried about being late for class… or maybe she just doesn't care enough about his love life to stick around…

Hiccup shakes his head. He has far more important things to worry about right now than Astrid's whereabouts. And whether or not she gives a crap about his current situation. No, really, he does.

No matter what his subconscious seems to be telling him.

… … …

"So," Hiccup says, looking down at his sundae as he stirs it in order to avoid making eye contact with Cami. "You… are you a freshman?"

There's a tiny (more than tiny?) part of him that hopes she'll say yes, so that he can jump up in his chair and say ha! My timer zeroed out when I was three so there's no way we could possibly be soulmates! Suck it! but Cami shakes her head. "Junior."

"…Oh." Well. It's not like he really would've told her to suck it, anyway. He's the one that texted her to meet up with him here after class, not the other way around. He wants to be here, really, he does, but… but why is he feeling so strangely against the idea of Cami being his soulmate? She seems plenty nice, and he's literally been looking forward to this day since he was three years old. What's up with him?

"Yeah," Cami is saying, oblivious to his inner turmoil. "I'm really short, is all. I just moved here from upstate because my mom got this new job offer and –"

"Wait," Hiccup interrupts, which is rude but necessary. "You just moved here?"

"Yup." She takes a careless bite of her mint-chip ice cream, and he can't help but hate that they have the same favorite flavor. What does that mean?

"My timer zeroed out when I was three," he informs her. "At a park. Willow Park. So… so if you didn't live here –"

"Oh, I have relatives here, we used to visit all the time when I was little," Cami says, waving her spoon around in an overexcited manner and getting a bit of ice cream on the table. Hiccup hands her a napkin, but instead of cleaning up the mess, she starts making an origami elephant with it. Which is… charming? He's not sure. "I'm sure I went to Willow Park once back then."

"Right," he says, watching her tiny hands transform the napkin from an elephant into a swan. "I can do a dragon, you know." Maybe this is it. Maybe this is where they bond over origami animals and everything turns out okay.

"Cool. I only do real life things, though," Cami says, with a certain air of pride, and Hiccup's stomach drops. So much for bonding.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I mean, fiction is so silly. Why read books about doing things when you can actually go out and do things, you know? Adventures are so much more adventurous when you're actually going on them. You feel me?"

"I, uh… yeah, I feel you," he says, because she looks so zealous, and he totally gets where she's coming from in theory. Just… not really in practice. "But what about things that don't exist in real life? Like dragons?"

"They're not worth my time!" Cami declares fervently, and Hiccup's actually afraid for a moment that she's going to stand up on the table and start yelling. "I live in the here! In the now! Not in some fantasy world with make-believe lands and a –"

"Okay," Hiccup whispers, because she's speaking loud enough that a couple a few tables away is staring at them. Cami looks riled up, so he gestures towards her empty ice cream cup to distract her. "You want some more mint-chip? On me?"

Cami's suddenly breezy again, and she waves a hand carelessly at him. "This date is on me, Hayden, so I'll buy you some more mint-chip." He balks slightly at the word date, and by the time he's gathered up the courage to attempt eye contact again she's already getting up.

"I'm not out of ice cream yet," he says quietly, even though Cami is already halfway across the room and headed towards the counter. She is really short. He's never been one to judge someone on their looks, let alone their height, but… but she's so short! He's 6'1 – 6'1, can you believe it, how weird is that? – and she's… 4'11, maybe? Shorter, possibly. That's… that's just such a height difference. How would they even kiss?

He closes his eyes as he attempts to block that thought out. He is not going there. But, still… he wishes Cami were a little taller. Tall enough for him not to feel like a giant around her. What's a good height difference, anyway? Eight inches, tops?

How tall is Astrid? 5'7? 5'6? It's not like he's ever walked up to her with a tape measure, but he figures that's about right. She's a good height for him. Not, like, for him, specifically, but… you know. For some other 6'1 inch tall person. Who isn't him.

He's having such a hard time convincing himself that he doesn't care how tall Astrid is that he's actually relieved when Cami comes back to the table with another cup of ice cream for him. He hadn't felt like ordering a cone, because he somehow can't imagine eating messily in front of his supposed soulmate like he had in front of Astrid, so he picks up his spoon again and starts working rather miserably on his suddenly unappetizing frozen treat.

If she were someone else (but not Astrid, who he is still not thinking about at all) he'd probably be making ice cream puns right now. He'd say something like 'I can tell our relationship is gonna be a rocky road'. And when it was time to go, he'd say 'I guess I'd better (banana) split'. And if they had a good time, he'd ask her if she'd want to meet up again, on Sundae. None of which are stellar, exactly, but they're still certainly decent. Why doesn't he feel the urge to tell any of them to her?

Cami watches him, uncharacteristically silent (or at least he thinks it's uncharacteristic of her, it's certainly the first time she's been quiet so far) as he more plays with his food than eats it. There's an awkward quietness for a moment before Hiccup determines that she must be waiting for him to express his gratitude for bringing him ice cream, and he says, "Thanks."

"No problem," Cami says, looking very nearly as anxious as he feels, but also looking like she's trying to hide it. It occurs to him that maybe she'd left the table to compose herself, and that maybe she's just as freaked out as he is. This is kind of a big deal.

He stiffens his resolve. "So what do you like to do for fun?"

Cami brightens instantly. "Oh, I fence."

Hiccup nearly chokes on a spoonful of ice cream. "You fence?"

"Yeah! It's like sword-fighting, but, you know… less lethal." She says the last part like it's a concession – like she'd much rather engage in a sport that occasionally ended in mortal wounds – and Hiccup can't help but smile. She's harmless-looking blonde girl who's actually secretly violent. It reminds him of – wait, no, it doesn't. Not at all.

And then suddenly his heart rate triples because he remembers. He remembers a blonde girl on the playground nearly fifteen years ago. She'd been… she'd been shoving some kid for taking her spot on the swing set, and Hiccup had been watching them with mild relief because he'd been considering sitting down on the vacated swing himself. She'd been short, and her hair had been long, and he thinks she'd had blue eyes.

"Hayden?" Cami says, waving a hand in front of his face. "Hey, come on, don't look like that, I'm not going to make you fence with me or anything. Unless you're up for it, of course…"

"No, no, that's okay," Hiccup says absently, and then realizes that she's still calling him Hayden. No one calls him Hayden, except for his granddad and that's just because he's Hayden Harrison Haddock the Second and he doesn't want to lose the honor of having his grandson named after him. Hiccup protested it for a while, but they finally reached a compromise where his granddad gets to call him Hayden as long as Hiccup gets to call him Old Wrinkly.

Cami is neither old nor wrinkly, so Hiccup says, "I actually don't really go by Hayden." If this girl really is his soulmate – and it's looking like she is, if he observes the situation purely objectively – then he doesn't want her calling him by a title he barely recognizes for the rest of his life,

"You don't? Wait, do you really go by Hayden Harrison Haddock the Third? I thought you were kidding…"

Hiccup laughs nervously. "Uh, no, I just… I have a nickname. Hiccup."

"Hiccup?" Cami questions, looking rather bemused. He's so used to going by his nickname that he'd almost forgotten how strange it is. Almost. "Why?"

"Oh, you know. Elementary school," Hiccup says vaguely. Cami seems to accept it.

"Alright then, Hiccup. What do you like to do?"

"Uh, I – I draw. And, uh – invent things. Sometimes. When I feel like it."

"Ah," Cami says, and kicks her legs under the table. One of them bangs into his prosthetic foot, and she frowns as she appears to practice some tact and not ask him how he lost it.

"Fire," Hiccup blurts out. Cami looks at him. "I, uh, the leg. Fire. A few years ago."

"Oh," Cami says. There's… there's nothing else to say, really. What do they talk about? Cami is clearly a chatty person, but she's being strangely quiet. He gets the feeling they're thinking the same thing.

"There's no way we're soulmates," Hiccup says aloud, his mouth moving without conscious permission from his brain. He's about to crawl under the table and die, but then Cami surprises him by grinning.

"I know, right? It's not that you're not nice, but…"

"Yeah," Hiccup agrees. They're just not… clicking. Sure, it's not like it always happens right away with soulmates, and it's always pretty awkward in the beginning, but sometimes you can just tell. And Hiccup can tell.

"I didn't see anyone else, though," Cami says, frowning. Hiccup mulls that over. Maybe her soulmate really is Astrid, which would actually suck a lot… or maybe –

Oh. No way.

Yes way, the gods seem to say, because at that moment Snotlout and his two favorite cronies, Ruffnut and Tuffnut (great for holding people down) walk in through the door. Snotlout's glancing nervously at his timer, looking green the face, and the twins are engaged in a raucous argument about what appears to be ice cream flavor preferences.

Hiccup groans. How had he forgotten that Snotlout had been in the hall earlier? And that he had turned nineteen last week? He'd been held back a year for failing math (or was it history? Hiccup can never remember) and now that Hiccup is thinking about it, Snotlout had mentioned at their last reluctant family dinner that his timer was almost up. He could've spared himself this entire awkward interaction by just not being an idiot and working out the fact that Snotlout is Cami's soulmate. Not him.

Duh.

"Oi, Snotlout!" Hiccup calls, to get his attention, and his cousin looks up. Hiccup gestures vaguely to Cami, and Snotlout frowns, then glances down at his watch and goes very pale. Hiccup is rather pleased at how freaked out he looks, but then he realizes how mean that is and pushes down the impulse to smirk.

"What are you doing?" Cami asks, and follows his gaze. "Isn't that the jerk who pushed you in the hallway?"

"I wouldn't call him that if I were you," Hiccup says wryly. Cami looks at him, then goes very wide-eyed and directs her stare back onto Snotlout.

Snotlout walks towards the table. Hiccup grins, folds his arms behind his back, and enjoys the show.

… … …

Hiccup gets home around four, and his elation fades at around the same time. Sure, it'd been great watching Cami lecture Snotlout on using his superior athletic abilities for heroism rather than bullying, and yeah, he'd thoroughly appreciated the twins laughing at his cousin's expense, and maybe he'd even been a little bit happy for the brand new couple-to-be when they'd started arguing about which sport was more violent (Snotlout said football, Cami backed hockey), but now he's alone and faced with the realization that he is still as soulmate-less as ever.

He sighs and collapses on the couch. He should've stayed a little longer, things were just getting interesting… Cami had pulled out her cell phone to compare yearly injury stats for their respective sports, and Snotlout had been looking at her like she was a Valkyrie or something. It's a match made in Valhalla, for sure… or maybe in Hel, Hiccup's torn. But the point is that he, Hiccup Haddock the Third, doesn't have a Valkyrie and he is not okay with that.

And yet…

And yet.

What if Cami had been his soulmate, anyway? She's not, obviously, but what if… what if she had been? What would he have done? Would he have gone out with her, would he have married her, would he have had kids with her one day? Not because he particularly liked her or wanted to be with her, but because the gods had dictated it so?

Would he have?

Hiccup is a man (yes, a MAN) of science, or as much of a man of science as he can be when everyone in the world is born with a soulmate timer from the gods on their wrist. He is a man of reason and logic and… and integrity. Why would he spend the rest of his life walking along the lines of what the gods had written out just to… to what, to please them? He's can't even really please his parents, why would he want to attempt to please the gods?

Hiccup sighs and drapes his elbow over his eyes. This is all irrelevant, anyway, because Cami's not his soulmate and whoever his soulmate is will be fantastic. It's not that he doesn't believe in fate, it's just that…

Well.

It's stupid.

It's very stupid, but… but if his fate doesn't involve Astrid, who he's been secretly thinking about the entire day, then he'd really rather have nothing to do with fate at all.

And Hiccup is literally the king of dumbassery – if his dad is the mayor of Berk then Hiccup is the mayor of berks – but this is a bit much, even for him. Denouncing fate and the gods and destiny and whatever because he's got an unrequited teenage crush on a girl that will obviously (obviously) fade in time transcends stupidity and hops right up to idiocy.

Really, he doesn't want him and Astrid to be together… that much. He just wants her to be in his life. That's not too unreasonable, is it?

Toothless yowls, because the first thing Hiccup usually does when he gets home is feed him. Hiccup gets up off the couch, drags himself to the kitchen, and opens up a can of wet food for his ever-helpful cat.

As he empties some expensive but seriously gross-looking cat food into Toothless's bowl, Hiccup realizes that he and Toothless are friends. And he really likes being Toothless's friend. And – and why not try it with Astrid?

So that's settled, then. Inner musings about letting the gods rule his future aside, he is going to be Astrid's friend.

Friends.

He can do that.

... … …

Hiccup: hey Astrid, you want to work on our project today? like now?

Astrid: Aren't you busy?

Hiccup: nope :) u up 4 it?

Astrid: We could meet up at the library at five and work there.

Hiccup: ok…

Astrid: I can't pick you up, you'll have to get a ride.

Hiccup: oh. sure. see u soon?

Astrid: Later.

Hiccup can't stop frowning at the text conversation as he sits in the passenger's seat on the ride to the library. It's very… curt. And formal. Sure, Astrid's texts are almost always perfectly typed out, but they've at least got a joking tinge to them. These are like… these are funeral texts. And she's not putting the 'fun' in 'funeral'. He wonders if something bad happened.

"Alright," his mom says, as they pull into the parking lot. Astrid's car is already there. "What time do you want me to pick you up?"

"I'll call you when I'm ready to go," Hiccup assures her. Val Haddock frowns.

"What time does the library close, again?"

"Not until eight, Mom."

She bites her lip. "I have some paperwork, I might not be able to get here until 8:30…"

"Mom. I can wait."

"I don't like the idea of you out in the dark…"

"Mom," Hiccup says firmly, and she sighs. She's not quite as bad as his dad, but she still worries way too much about him. "I'll be fine." He gives her a gracious kiss on the cheek and practically dashes inside, because he hasn't talked to Astrid all day.

She's at a round table near the front of the library, and he grins as he sits down next to her. It feels great, having come to terms with what he wants them to be. Friends. Well, it doesn't feel great, and he doesn't exactly want to be friends, but he does feel better about accepting what their relationship is.

"Hey," he greets her. She slams the book she'd been reading shut with enough force that it makes a bang like a gunshot, and a librarian does that classic 'shh' thing from behind the counter.

"Wow," Hiccup says, still smiling rather stupidly and trying to ignore how stony Astrid's face is. "You take the phrase hitting the books to a whole new level."

Astrid doesn't even acknowledge his sad attempt at a joke. "We should get started," she says briskly, and Hiccup can't help but feel slightly offended. Sure, it hadn't been his best material, but it wasn't bad.

…Okay, well, it wasn't horrible.

…Okay, well it wasn't the worst joke he'd ever told. Remember the cat puns? Yeah, a little play on words with books is definitely not the lowest he can go.

"So, what are you reading?" he asks lightly, in a vain attempt to bring the atmosphere out of the dark deep pit it seems to have fallen into. Astrid shoves the book into her backpack but otherwise ignores him.

How polite.

"You looked pretty absorbed in it when I came in," Hiccup says, attempting to peer into her bag but giving up when she tucks it under the table. "Was it a book about mazes? Because I really got lost in one of those once."

Astrid wordless opens her laptop and, okay, something is definitely wrong here. That joke was gold! It was right up there with the classic coffee pun 'this coffee tastes like dirt because it was just ground'! How is Astrid not smiling?

Feeling just a little bit desperate, Hiccup tacks on, "Or is it a book about anti-gravity? I know those are just impossible to put down." Astrid finally acknowledges that he's telling her jokes, but not exactly in a good way.

"Look, Hiccup," she says flatly, so monotone that it almost makes him wince. "If we actually work on this project, for once, we can finish it today. And then we can never talk to each other again, and gods knows that would be nice. So please, just for right now, focus."

Ooouuuch.

It's a good thing he'd given up any and all ideas of a romance with Astrid earlier, because ouch. What if he'd come in here planning to tell her that he wanted to be with her even if they weren't soulmates (and he'd considered it, in secret) only to have her shoot him down like that before he could even say anything? Talk about a knife to the heart.

As it is, it still kind of feels like he's bleeding out from internal injuries at her words. He'd just come to the conclusion that he wants her in his life, for Odin's sake, and now she's saying that she never wants to talk to him again? He'll say it again: ooouuuch.

He offers her a weak smile, though, because she doesn't owe him anything, and gets his own laptop out of his book bag.

"Did you do those calculations I asked you to do?" she queries as he brings up Excel. He nods and digs around in his bag for them.

"Yeah, got 'em. Algebraic explanation of the ideal number of years required for carbon dating to be as accurate as possible."

"Thanks," Astrid says, and he watches how she focuses on not letting their hands brush as he hands her the paper.

"You might want to double check them, though, I suck at math." Which isn't strictly true – math is a big part of science and, well, Hiccup is a science nerd – but he figures if he did make a mistake and it brings down their grade by even half a percentage, Astrid will kill him. At least this way it's not technically his fault.

"Yeah, right," Astrid huffs, looking over his work. "This is perfect."

She doesn't say it in a way that's particularly complimentary – in fact, it comes off kind of grudging and bitter. Hiccup sinks down in his seat. "I guess I just got lucky this time."

"There's no luck involved in math, Hiccup."

Because Hiccup is an idiotic masochist who thrives off of making people angry through rebellion, he says, "There must be, because I usually can't even do simple equations. Even 2n plus 2n is 4n to me."

Astrid pauses, and he swears he sees the shadow of a smile tug at the corners of her lips for a moment. Really, he swears. On his one good leg. It's there.

But only for a moment.

"Seriously?" she snaps, sounding more resigned than angry at his antics. Hiccup sighs and turns his focus back onto his laptop, officially having given up on his make-Astrid-laugh-or-even-smile-slightly campaign, and manages to get lost in the bar graphs and line charts of their presentation. It's so quiet that he can almost pretend he's in his room, with both of his parents out, except for the fact that it's a lot cleaner and there's no cat sabotaging his work by lying on the keyboard and begging for a belly rub. Even though cats aren't even supposed to like belly rubs. Stupid Toothless.

They work in rather uncompanionable silence for about half an hour before Astrid leans back and rubs at her eyes. "I have to go to the bathroom," she announces, and Hiccup watches her leave in the peripheral of his vision but doesn't say or do anything.

Hiccup is a prying and curious individual at heart – that is, he's unbearably nosy – and once he's sure that Astrid is out of sight, he ducks under the table and takes out her backpack to take a look at what she'd been reading when he came in. He wouldn't be snooping if he thought it were anything actually personal or important, but he's sure it's just some random book that she doesn't really care if he sees. But not knowing has been driving him crazy.

He reads the title, and it's… Unusual Soulmate Timer Cases of the 20th Century, Vol. 3. Hiccup frowns. Why would Astrid be reading this? He notes a dog-eared page and flips to it.

The section Astrid's marked is about a girl named Hannah Grayson, born 1923, who claimed while she was alive that her soulmate timer zeroed out on someone who had already found their soulmate. Assuming that it wasn't some sort of mistake, she would be one of the rare and unlucky people who suffered from something called unrequited soulmatism – when someone is your soulmate, but you're not theirs.

Hiccup stares at the page. What does this even mean? Unrequited soulmatism is kind of like a medical myth, as the entire concept of soulmates is that you complete each other's soul, which leans upon the basis that everyone has one specific match – why is Astrid reading about this? How is unrequited soulmatism even relevant to her life? They're in the same honors English class, so it's not like it's a school assignment or anything…

Hiccup puts the book back and climbs back into his chair. Astrid's not back yet, thank the gods, and he attempts to absorb himself back into his Excel project. He can't.

Does Astrid… does Astrid think she doesn't have a soulmate or something? Is that why she seems so miserable? Does she think she zeroed out on someone who has a different soulmate? Why would she assume that? That's ridiculous, who wouldn't want Astrid as their soulmate?

He starts working on a Toothless pie chart to take his mind off of it, and he's trying to work out whether the cat has more tuna or snarkiness in him when Astrid comes back. She peers over his shoulder and sighs when she sees what he's doing, but apparently decides it's not worth the trouble to lecture him on it.

"I'd add a space for cuteness, if I were you," she says as she sits back down, and Hiccup grins at her. She's talking to him again, score!

"But then where would I put diabolical?" he poses. Astrid rolls her eyes before focusing her gaze back on her laptop, which isn't exactly friendly but is definitely very Astrid. Hiccup decides it's a win.

They work in a remotely more comfortable manner for the next couple of hours – it's still silent, but more… relaxed – with Hiccup switching in between his school graphs and his Toothless one, and Astrid working diligently on the brushing up of their written speech.

It's only once it's nearing eight o'clock that Hiccup finally gathers up the nerve to breach the subject he hasn't quite been able to stop thinking about all evening. "Hey, Astrid, I, uh… I saw your book."

Astrid snaps her eyes up to him. "What?"

"The, uh. The one about the soulmate timer stuff. And unrequited soulmatism."

Astrid's fingers curl dangerously on top of her laptop's keyboard. "Why were you going through my stuff?"

"I wasn't, I –" Hiccup sighs. "Okay, I was, but I – I just wanted to say… you don't have it."

She glares at him. He wonders if she's really going to punch him, here and now, right in the middle of a library. She wouldn't… would she? That would make quite a scene… "I don't have what? A project partner who minds his own business?"

He flushes. "No, you – well, you don't have that either, but I just meant – you'll find your soulmate. Someday. I know it." He offers her his trademark Hiccup-grin, lopsided and goofy, and Astrid's anger seems to dissipate.

"Easy for you to say," she says, looking rather depressed. "You already found your soulmate."

Hiccup's smile freezes. "What?"

"You know. That girl. Cami." Astrid's face is dark. "You seem really happy about it."

"Oh, I –" Had he really forgotten to mention the rather crucial detail of Cami not being his soulmate? It'd all been so surreal, he'd barely even remembered that Astrid was there when it happened. "She wasn't my soulmate."

Astrid's entire demeanor suddenly changes; she goes from slumped and tired-looking to instantly alert in about a quarter of a second. "She what?"

"Yeah, she saw Snotlout. Weird, right? Snotlout!" He shakes his head. "At least he won't be hitting on you anymore, right?"

"I – yeah," Astrid says, looking very taken aback. "So – so you – why didn't you tell me?"

"I was going to," he throws at her, which is totally true. If she'd been talking to him, he definitely would have brought up the whole thing. "But you said you wanted to finish the project and never speak again and I kind of took that to mean you didn't want to know."

"…Right," Astrid says, her cheeks and neck turning faintly red. Which is adorable. "Sorry. About that."

"And I'm sorry I looked for your stuff," he offers. Astrid's suddenly smiling at him – a little, suppressed smile, like she's holding back a bigger one, and it's so genuine that he feels like he's floating.

"I liked your math pun," she says through her grin. Hiccup throws his hands up and mimes praising Valhalla.

"Thank you, finally. I'd been saving that one for weeks and you totally stomped it down."

"Sorry," Astrid says again, not looking very sorry at all. What's with her, anyway? One minute she's all cold and cut off and the next she's… this. Which is not to say he doesn't like this. He likes this very much.

Astrid's smile suddenly drops. "Are you… okay?" she asks, searching his face for something, although he has no idea what.

"Yeah, of course. Why?"

"I mean… you thought you found your soulmate… and… you know…"

"Oh. Nah, I'm fine, she was a fencer."

Astrid laughs. "A fencer?"

"Yeah. Can you imagine? One minute we're fighting over laundry and the next she's impaled me on her saber. I think I'll let Snotlout take that one, thanks."

"So… you're not upset at all?" Astrid looks to be in a very good mood, which Hiccup doesn't exactly get, but it's still ridiculously contagious. He grins back at her.

"Not a bit. I have a soulmate, I just…" He considers telling her his inner conflict of sorts, the one about not relying on the gods for answers, but decides against it. "I haven't found her yet."

Astrid stares at him. "You sure about that?"

And before he can ask her what the Hel that's supposed to mean, Astrid's leaning over the table and proving that she doesn't mind causing scenes in libraries. Except that she doesn't punch him. Gods, she doesn't punch him. She opposite-of-punches him.

As Astrid Hofferson gently grabs his face and kisses him, Hiccup thinks (quite eloquently, considering the situation), oh.

… … …

 _Hey guys, sorry I couldn't post this sooner but I'm literally so behind in school right now because of my lack of internet D: I spent the whole weekend catching up and doing two huge projects for financial accounting but I finally managed to get this down last night 'round 3 AM. I was really tired and I did it in an hour so I know it came out weird and disjointed but hopefully the hiccstrid kiss was okay? more details on that next chap btw :D_

 _Thanks so so much for the reviews guys! I totally flipped when they got up to 360… AHA get it? because… a 360… is a flip… so… I flipped… aha… I'm so sorry…_


	11. Chapter 11

Hiccup has never kissed a girl before.

Which all that isn't surprising, really. Most people his age haven't, because meeting your soulmate tends to be an adult thing – Hiccup would bet that even Snotlout, for all his proclamations of being great with the ladies, hasn't kissed a girl yet. Unless he and Cami really hit it off at the ice cream shop.

Maybe the two of them had been talking about totally innocuous, non-kiss related things when Cami had suddenly leaned across the table and pressed their lips together in a way that was both very gentle and very deep. Maybe she'd cupped his face with both her hands and her hair had fallen in waves over them both and maybe she'd been soft and warm and wonderful. Maybe it'd lasted a full minute. And maybe Snotlout had been so taken aback that he'd just sat there like an idiot throughout the duration of the entire amazing thing.

Hmm, why does that situation sound so familiar…?

Oh, that's right, because Astrid does exactly as mentioned above and Hiccup freezes to the back of his seat like he's glued there or something. Seriously, his dad's always getting on his case about how poor his posture is ("slouching makes you look like you want to be small, son!"), but if he were there he'd be nodding approvingly at the complete and utter rigidity of his only child.

Like, really, he just goes still. What a stupid thing to do. How is he leading the race for valedictorian, again? The girl of his dreams kisses him and he doesn't kiss back. He doesn't do anything. He just sits there like a statue and thinks, hey, Astrid's wearing a Green Day shirt, I didn't notice that before.

Astrid's determined by nature, and she kisses him for what feels like days before she finally seems to give up on the hopes of him returning the gesture. She pulls away and opens her eyes to look into his, which he's sure are wide and shocked and totally crazed. Hers are nice, though. Very blue. And pretty.

"Um," she says. She's a little out of breath, and her lips are a tiny bit swollen, but otherwise he wouldn't have guessed what they were doing literally two seconds ago. "Um," she says again, and it occurs to him that this is the most awkward he's ever seen her. Too bad he's too statuesque to enjoy the immensely pleasant turnaround.

"I, uh," she starts, then shoves her wrist in his face. "I got my quote."

He reads it. The heart has its reasons which reason knows not. Huh. That's a good one. Poetic, brief, enlightening – the ideal timer quote, really. Figures that Astrid would get it. He bets his is going to be something completely useless like love is patient or something, if he ever gets one at all.

Oh, wait, Astrid is talking again. It's probably important. He tries to focus on her. "You see, I was – I was thinking about you – after we talked, when, um, we were sick, the first day, and… and I, I was thinking about you, and… about why I liked you, and then I realized there was no real reason and then, the, uh –"

"Wait," Hiccup, finally managing to pull himself out of his comatose stupor. The recovery is truly miraculous. "So you're saying I'm not likable?"

"What? No! I'm saying –"

"It sounds like you're saying you like me but you don't know why because I'm not likable."

"Then you need your hearing checked," Astrid says firmly, crossing her arms and glaring at him. Her hair isn't up in its usual braid today, and she flips it sassily to convey… dominance or something, he's not sure. It works, though. "I know perfectly well why I like you, I just… wasn't sure why I… you know. Like you."

"Oh," he says quietly. "That's… not that much better, actually."

"Of course it is!"

"No, no, you're saying you get liking me as a friend but not as a romantic interest."

"I literally just kissed you, Hiccup," Astrid says, in a perfect imitation of his own dry sarcasm. He hopes he's not rubbing off on her too much, because he's not sure if he could handle someone as sardonic and horrible as himself. "I think I've come to terms with it."

"But you don't like liking me," he responds petulantly, and pointedly ignores how ridiculous he probably sounds. Astrid glares at him.

"Not when you're being difficult, I don't!" she snaps, looking like she's on the edge of jumping out of her chair and throttling him. She takes a few deep breaths to calm herself down, and says, rather softly, "But… when we're, you know, talking… and stuff… I don't mind it. Too much."

"…Ah." He can't believe this is happening. Astrid just kissed him, and now she's saying… well, she's saying… what is she saying? He slumps down in his chair, back to his old poor-posture self, and they then proceed to lapse into the most strained and awkward silence of the 21st century. And the 20th century. And the 19th. Pretty much all of the centuries, actually.

The tense atmosphere is broken by a lady announcing over the loudspeakers, "The library will be closing in ten minutes." Hiccup flinches, as does Astrid, and they stare at each other for a moment before he quickly averts his gaze to the ceiling and starts packing up his laptop. It takes him a few tries to get it into his book bag, as he's not actually watching what he's doing, but not having to look anywhere near the vicinity of Astrid makes it worth it.

"Do you… um, need a ride home?" Astrid asks him as she stands up. She sounds tentative. And quiet. And… meek. He's never heard Astrid sound meek before.

"Do you think we're soulmates?" he poses in response. Astrid freezes, then sits back down.

"I… think it's a possibility," she says slowly. "A very strong possibility."

"Yeah," he says, watching all the pieces click into place in his mind's eye. The violent blonde girl near the swing sets fifteen years ago. Astrid's timer zeroing out on the first day of kindergarten. The way he feels around her. Why she's got that book about unrequited soulmatism in her bag… that must be because of the short-lived Cami situation.

"A ride home would be nice," he finally says, breaking the awkward silence again. Astrid smiles nervously at him, and he tries to return it, but it doesn't quite come out… real. Astrid's face falls.

"Okay," she says, and they leave the library just as the woman behind the counter is announcing the five-minute mark. Hiccup texts his mom not to pick him up as they walk towards Astrid's car.

"Are, uh," Astrid says. "Are you… what do you think? About. My theory."

"I don't know," he says, shoving his phone into its rightful place in his back pocket and buckling his seatbelt. "It's weird."

"…Oh," Astrid says, in a very unAstrid-like way, and it occurs to him that her entire demeanor is actually very unAstrid-like right now. He watches her as she starts the car, and she looks… rather miserable. She… does she think he's rejecting her or something?

"I just need time. To, you know. Take it in," he tacks on quickly. "I, uh… it's a lot."

"Yeah," Astrid says, shaking her head. "Yeah, no, yeah, I get it." She puts her arm on the back of his chair and looks behind her as they pull out, and the proximity is enough that Hiccup's breath hitches. Oh, great, so her body being close to his general vicinity is enough to give him a heart attack, but her kissing him renders him immobile? He's such a loser.

And why is he doing this, anyway? Astrid tells him that she likes him, albeit awkwardly and in a round-about-way, and he doesn't say it back. Astrid suggests that they might be soulmates and he says he needs to think about it. Really? Think about it? He doesn't need to think about his feelings for Astrid, he knows what his feelings for Astrid are, and they go up and above the definition of 'like-liking', as a middle-schooler would so eloquently put it.

But… but he'd just resigned himself to being her friend and nothing else! Literally earlier that day! What the Hel, Odin? Thor? Freya? No, scratch those guys, it's gotta be Loki. Loki is doing this to him, that gods-damned trickster son of a –

Hiccup sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. It's… it's been a long day. Just that morning he'd been all excited to get back to school and see Astrid again after being sick, and now he's met and written off a potential soulmate, hooked up his jerk of a cousin, gotten kissed by Astrid Hofferson, and then not kissed Astrid Hofferson back. Not. Kissed. Her. Back.

When he'd lost his leg three years ago, the doctors had told him that he'd suffered no severe brain trauma. Hiccup considers suing them for incompetence.

"Here we are," Astrid says a few miles later, applying the parking break and shutting off the engine. He's not sure why, because he was under the impression that she'd slow down just long enough for him to barrel roll out of the car and then she'd drive away fast enough to leave skid marks on the driveway, but instead she turns in her seat and looks at him.

"So…" he says, fumbling with the release on his seatbelt. He's so smooth. "I, uh, see you tomorrow?"

"I'd like to kiss you again," Astrid tells him matter-of-factly. Hiccup seatbelt smacks him in the face as he finally gets it loose.

"Ow! Um… what?"

Astrid's expression is completely neutral, but the faint blush tinging her cheeks is visible even in the darkness and it kind of gives her away. "I thought you deserved a fair warning. So you don't freeze again."

"Oh."

"Hiccup. Can I kiss you?" It's a question this time, voiced softly as she looks at him through hooded eyelashes. Hiccup nods jerkily without really thinking about it, because of course he wants to kiss Astrid, but changes his mind almost immediately after. He needs time to consider the implications of this. It doesn't matter, though, because Astrid is already unbuckling her seatbelt with far more grace than he could ever muster and leaning towards him.

Her breath is soft on his face for a moment before she closes the gap, and this time his body doesn't freeze. In fact, it does exactly the opposite – his left hand moves up to cradle her jaw out of its own accord, and he shifts his head slightly downwards to improve the angle. He's taller than her, even when they're sitting down, and he was right about them having the perfect height difference. He has to bend a little to make their position over the console work, but it's not the slightest bit uncomfortable and he loves it.

Astrid tastes like spearmint and coffee, which is not a combination he'd usually find appealing but in this case it really really is. They should make a candy this flavor, he'd buy up the entire world's collection in about a week. But then, he thinks, maybe it wouldn't be the same, because it's not really the spearmint or the coffee that's amazing, it's Astrid, and she's just one of those things that you can't bottle and sell. Which is a shame, because he'd buy up the entire world's collection of Astrid in a day.

The kiss starts off soft, but once she realizes he's responding Astrid opens her mouth against his and all bets are off. She twists her fingers into his hair to keep him where he is – like he'd ever leave – before biting his lower lip gently, then soothing it with her tongue. With her tongue. He feels like he's on fire, but the good kind of fire, the kind that keeps you warm and happy and not the kind that burns down your house and leaves you crippled.

His hand moves from her face to the back of her neck, still without his permission, and tangles itself in her ridiculously silky hair. He kisses her harder, and kind of sloppily due to inexperience, but Astrid either doesn't notice or doesn't care. She grabs the front of his shirt with so much force that she nearly rips it, and makes this whiny little moaning noise that bypasses his brain completely and travels straight downwards to his –

"Son?" he suddenly hears, and the two of them jump apart from each other so fast that he bumps his head on the roof of the car. Ow…

"Is that you out there, Hiccup?" Oh, right, his dad. Who is home. Which he had not forgotten. Obviously.

Hiccup soothes down his mussed hair and opens the car door so that he can shout, "Yeah, Dad, it's me! Go back to watching Cops reruns!" He thinks he hears his dad mutter something about how he's not watching Cops, he's watching America's Next Top Model, but Hiccup decides to metaphorically stick his fingers in his ears for that one.

"Um," Astrid says. Her face is bright red and her hair is everywhere and he realizes that they hadn't just been kissing, they'd been making out. He'd just made out with Astrid Hofferson,

"I should – I should probably go," he mumbles, gesturing vaguely towards the now-closed front door of his house. "He, uh… my dad'll worry. If I don't come in."

"Right," Astrid says, "I'll… see you soon?"

"Yup," he squeaks, and bolts out of the car towards his house. He watches her from the window once he's inside, and notices she doesn't drive off for a full four minutes. And when she does, it's without the usual grace and precision he's come to expect from her not only when she gets behind the wheel, but always.

Huh.

… … …

"Okay," Hiccup says, assuming an old prayer position on his bed that he hasn't used in years. "Okay, Odin, Thor, Freya, whatever – I need help."

Using whatever in a sentence probably isn't the best way to start off his plea, so he clears his throat and starts again. "Um. Great gods of Valhalla, mighty and, uh, kind… and generous… and good-looking! So good-looking, and… and smart. Way smarter than any mortal being! And you… you've all got great senses of humor, I mean, you not only created Justin Bieber but you made him famous, that's pretty funny…"

This isn't going well, either. Hiccup coughs. "Look, guys – er, gods – the thing is… the thing is, you've messed up my life a lot. You zeroed out my timer, you cut off my leg, you landed me with the worst cat in the history of the universe…" Toothless glares at him. "Okay, well, the last one's not strictly true, but the point is, uh, you've been pretty harsh. Given me some lousy hands. And… I'm cool with that! I can deal, you know, but I was thinking, um, that, you could… you know. Let me. Um. Have my quote."

The gods don't respond. Toothless does, though – the look on his face clearly says wow, just when I thought you couldn't get any crazier, you start talking to the ceiling. Props, kid. Hiccup picks up a shirt from the floor and throws it lightly towards his devil-cat, who dodges it and hops up on the bed with him to provide emotional support. Toothless isn't so bad, really.

"Ignore that," Hiccup says, feeling slightly bolder and less ridiculous with Toothless at his side. "It's just that… Astrid kissed me today. As I'm sure you know. And said we might be soulmates. And… and I want it to be true, really really bad, but I'm not sure it is. What if we're wrong and then…" he swallow hard. "And then we start dating and I fall in love with her and then she finds her real soulmate and ditches me? What if… what if she's just settling for me because she thinks she'll never find anyone else? What if I'm, like… a backup plan? What if she dates me but eventually ends up with someone perfect and lives happily ever after but I never smile again for the rest of my life because I can't get over her?"

He hands drop from their prayer position into his lap as he tries to convince himself that his burning eyes are from allergies to Toothless – finally, an excuse to get rid of him! – and not from… you know. Sadness. He has no reason to be sad right now. Toothless rubs against his palm and start purring encouragingly, so Hiccup pets him lightly (he'd never really get rid of him, even if he was allergic) and resumes his request to the gods.

"So, basically," he says, quite nervously, because this is the moment of truth. "I was thinking… that a quote could help. I mean, I know you can't reset my timer – or you won't reset my timer, in any case – but you could… you could give me a quote. Like, something so I know you're listening. So I know you'll work things out. Or, you know what, you don't have to work things out, you can just give me my quote and that'll be the end of it. You'll never hear from me again. I…" He sighs. "Just give me something, okay? You've never given me anything. And I… I'll take whatever you're willing to part with."

Hiccup lies back on his bed, officially exhausted, and hold Toothless closer as he curls up in the center of his chest. "How'd I do, bud?"

Toothless makes a noncommittal growling noise that Hiccup takes as a thumbs up, and they soak in the near-silence of night together for a while. He can faintly hear his dad watching TV from downstairs – it sounds like he's moved onto Keeping up with the Kardashians, which he must have recorded because it doesn't come on at this time of night – and his mom is bustling around in the kitchen. She must be making coffee, as she can't cook a thing, and his mind immediately flashes back to kissing Astrid. His lips still tastes like hers. This is the time of night when he usually brushes his teeth, but he's firmly decided that he's going to screw hygiene and keep the spearminty flavor of Astrid in his mouth forever.

Wow, that sounds creepy.

He thinks about turning the light off and removing his leg so that he can go to bed, but that would require moving and he's really just not up for that right now. So instead he just lies there, listening as his dad quickly changes the program to football when his wife walks in, and laughing lightly when Valka presses the previously button and catches him red-handed. They sound so happy and light-hearted and… soulmatey. Come on, gods, come on…

Hiccup's just starting to get Toothless all worked up by scratching behind his ears when his wrist starts itching. He yanks his hand away so fast that his timer almost hits his cat in the face, but he doesn't notice his glare.

He takes off his watch. And there it is.

It takes a while for him to decipher the words, because they're distorted by the black sharpie he'd put on there years ago, but eventually he figures them out. And frowns. And reads them again. And frowns harder. And turns his timer upside down as he looks for a hidden messages. And doesn't find them, and frowns harder.

"Oh my gods," Hiccup says, staring at his quote. "Oh my gods." He hops up from his bed and shakes his timer up at the sky.

"Seriously, Odin? Thor? This is what you give me? This is my hint? This is my quote? This isn't… this is crazy! What's wrong with you?" He shoves himself off of his bed and paces the room for a moment before stopping and reading his timer again.

Toothless's stare turns into one of curiosity rather than spite. "Look at this, bud," Hiccup fumes, and shoves his timer up to his face. Despite Hiccup's mounting suspicions that his cat is completely fluent in English, he certainly can't read it, and he gazes curiously up at his human as if to ask what it says.

"I can't believe this," Hiccup says weakly, then clears his throat. "Listen to this, Toothless. This is my enlightening, meaningful, legitimate freakin' quote."

Toothless leans forward excitedly.

"One good thing about internet dating," Hiccup reads through a sigh, "is that you're guaranteed to click with whomever you meet."

His cat stares for a moment. Then his face breaks out into what is surely a cat smile as he rolls over onto his stomach and probably laughs.

"What, so the gods' puns are funny but mine aren't? This wasn't what I meant when I said you had a sense of humor, you know!" His shout is loud enough that not only the gods but his parents hear it, and their movement downstairs stills.

"You alright up there, son?" his dad calls. Hiccup sighs.

"Fine, Dad, just… talking Toothless."

"What'd he do this time?"

"…you don't want to know." He collapses back onto his bed and throws his elbow over his eyes. "This is terrible, Toothless."

He looks at his cat in the hopes of some companionable commiserating, but Toothless doesn't appear to be even remotely sympathetic. Karma's a bitch, his eyes seem to say, and Hiccup makes a face at him.

"Just because I tell bad puns doesn't mean I deserve for my quote to be one."

Yes it does.

"It's not even a good pun," Hiccup mutters, staring at his timer again. "It's decent, at best. Maybe… maybe it does mean something."

He sits up and reads the words for the tenth time in just a few minutes. "Maybe… maybe I'll meet my soulmate through internet dating. Maybe… maybe this means it's not Astrid."

That's an idiotic idea, Toothless pretty much tells him. Hiccup sighs, because he's right. Internet dating involves entering the days left on your timer into a computer and seeing if anyone else has the same amount, and he doesn't have a number to put down anyway.

"I hate this," he says, his voice cracking slightly. This is his quote. He's been waiting for this for the last fifteen years, clinging onto it with all the hopes he's ever had, and it's… it's useless. It's beyond useless, and it's actually appropriate because he's beyond useless too. He and Astrid can't possibly soulmates because she's amazing and he's a hiccup.

He lies back down and rolls over onto his face to that Toothless won't see him cry, but the cat seems to grasp that his human is genuinely upset now and climbs up onto his head.

"Thanks," Hiccup says, his voice muffled by the pillow, as Toothless chews on his hair as some sick form of comfort. It is kind of soothing, actually, but that's not the point.

"What should I do?" Hiccup asks quietly, adjusting his head so that he's looking Toothless right in the eyes. "You're a huge know-it-all, what should I do?"

For the first time ever, Hiccup can't decipher Toothless's gaze.

… … …

Hiccup spends stays up until two A.M. googling helpful soulmate quotes, but none of them are right. None of them fit him. Which is only fair, as they're not his quotes, but still… still, he'd been hoping.

As he shuts down his computer, Hiccup makes a decision. He's going to write his own quote. He's not going to sit around waiting for the gods to hit him over the head with an epiphany, he's going to get there on his own. He's going to make something up himself and it will be perfect for him because it's written by him.

Except… he has no idea what to write.

Love is… like a two-sided coin… if it lands on one side – no, that's stupid.

Love is like a fire, it could destroy your belongings and uproot your life and take off your leg but – how could love crush take off your leg? Nope.

Love costs an arm and a leg. That doesn't even make any sense, and plus Gobber's missing both those limbs and he's still single.

Love is bad puns and laughter. Not bad, but also not particularly helpful. And also he's not really in the mood for puns right now.

Love is a mirror… yeah, no.

Love is stupid.

That's the one he decides to go with. Love is stupid. He crumples up his piece of paper and throws it across the room, only to miss his waste basket by two feet. Hiccup sighs.

As he walks towards the corner to pick up his failed endeavors and throw them away properly, something on his desk catches his eye. His teraminx. Which is basically nerd-speak for a ginormous twelve-sided Rubik's cube.

It's been there for ages, so he's not sure why it catches his attention now. He hates the thing. When he was just three years old, his mom had bought him a regular Rubik's cube to keep him occupied and he'd solved it half an hour, which, thinking back on it, was probably a fluke or something. In any case, he'd bragged about his self-proclaimed legendary feat so loudly and so often that his mom had given him the teraminx that Christmas and smirked when couldn't figure it out.

He'd spent months trying to solve that thing. His getting it happened rather close in proximity to his timer zeroing out, and he'd needed a distraction, and his teraminx was the perfect thing to get lost in. He'd wasted his entire fourth birthday locked up in his room messing with it, which he regrets because that was one of his few legitimate birthdays (leap years) and all he's got for memories are moments of complete and utter frustration.

His obsession with it had died down over the years, though, and it had actually been thrown uncompleted into the giveaway pile when he was fourteen. It'd been out on the front doorstep when the house caught fire, and it (along with everything else in the box) had been left completely unscathed by the disaster that took his foot. His mom refuses to let him get rid of it, now, so he's stuck with it. He struggles with it occasionally, when he's bored or can't sleep, but he hasn't genuinely cared about finishing it in ages.

But as Hiccup looks at it now, the stubborn streak he's inherited from his father flares up into serious determination. He is going to solve that teraminx. He's older, now, and smarter, and it looks really frickin' close to being done already and he wants to complete it. He wants to succeed at something.

Hiccup sits down on his bed and starts twisting the thing furiously, probably reversing all of his prior progress as he does so, but he doesn't particularly care. He's got time. He's going to do this, and then he's going to deal with the Astrid thing. Then, and only then, is he going to decide whether loving her is worth the risk.

As he sits there, the minutes trailing into hours and his eyes becoming increasingly tired, Hiccup thinks about his Rubik's cube. It's… it's a little like love, isn't it? It's complicated. It's frustrating. It looks ugly, and it makes him want to scream and throw stuff across a room because he just can't get it, and he'd probably be better off without it. It's pointless.

But… but it's also kind of fun. It's kind of exhilarating. There's a little spark of happiness every time he makes a move that he knows is right, and he knows it's right for no reason other than his instinct. And… and when it's done, when he finally understands it, it will be perfect. It will be right from whatever angle he looks at it, and somehow everything will be worth it.

Cue epiphany stick.

At 6:23 AM, the last section of his teraminx clicks into its place. Hiccup solves the puzzle he's been working at since he was three.

… … …

Hiccup walks straight towards Astrid at school the next day, completely ignoring Snotlout (who attempts not to shove him but talk to him in the hallway) and Fighlegs (who today of all days wants to hang out) and the twins (who bombard him with questions about Snotlout and Cami). He has his eyes set on only one person, and once he gets to her he grins and hold out his wrist.

Astrid blushes the moment she sees him, but it fades when she seems to get his implication. "You – you got your quote?"

"Read it," he says, through his smile. Astrid complies.

"Um," she says, after a minute. "It's, uh…"

"Very me?" he offers. Astrid grins with him, then sticks her hands in her pockets awkwardly.

"So, then… what do we do now?"

Hiccup answers her by sweeping her grandly towards him, dipping her downwards, and kissing her passionately on the lips. Or, at least, he tries to – he gets stuck on the first step, when he tugs Astrid's arms in his direction and they end up bumping their foreheads together.

"Ouch," Hiccup says, more out of social convention than pain. Astrid laughs.

"So you thought about it?"

"I thought about it," Hiccup affirms, and kisses her, for real this time. He hears the hallway fall practically silent, apart from the catcalling of the twins, and he knows he's going to be stared at constantly for the next week at least in the aftermath of all this. He's going to be right in the center of attention. Whispers are going to follow him as he walks by, and he'll be constantly uncomfortable, and things will play out in almost the same way that they had when he'd lost his leg.

Almost.

Except that this time, Hiccup is happy to make the trade.

… … …

 _Can u tell I started this story with the intent of Hiccup's quote being a pun? :D Sorry for the wait and suckiness on this one, had some writers block… oh and no internet 'til tuesday so see u all then for what might be the last chapter? I love writing this and want it to go on but I always planned for it to end here and plus I dunno how to continue it without pointless drama unless I boost the rating up to M… nngh… what do you guys think?_

 _Speaking of you guys… you're all so amazing! special shout-out to literally all of you for reading, reviewing, favoriting, the works! And an EXTRA-special shout-out to you, Daniella Violet Moon – u know why – and to guest IfThisIsItCrazy because his/her reviews made me laugh like a maniac. AND ANONOMO FOR SAYING FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING SOUNDS TAXING! Seriously responding to u guys is the best part of my day and I have to do it in my room or else my mom comments that me smiling hugely at my computer screen is 'super creepy' aha xo Jolly_


	12. Chapter 12

(6 weeks later)

"Nope. Nuh-uh. No."

"Hiccup, you haven't even looked at –"

"Astrid. No."

"But –"

"No."

"Hiccup!"

"Seriously. No."

"Hiccup," Astrid says firmly, turning the computer screen towards him. "Look at it."

"No!"

"Why not?"

Hiccup crosses his arms and slouches down in Astrid's desk chair, which he'd sat in willingly just a few minutes ago, before his girlfriend had made the connection that she's currently trying to show him. "Because I already know what Comic Sans looks like, okay?"

"And what does it look like?"

He sighs. "It looks stupid."

"And?"

"And like something a first-grader designed."

"And?"

"And the kind of thing that'd make you get an F if you used it on an assignment."

"And?"

Hiccup decides to throw in the towel on this one. "It looks like the font on my soulmate timer," he mutters, and Astrid fist pumps the air.

"Aha! I knew it! I knew it and I knew you knew it, your quote is in Comic Sans!"

"It's not like it's my fault," Hiccup grumbles, curling up on himself even more tightly. "I think it's well established by now that the gods hate me."

Astrid kisses him quickly as something as a consolation prize, and Hiccup unfurls himself just a little bit. "Cheer up, it fits the words."

"What, you're saying my quote is bad enough to be worthy of Comic Sans?"

"Hiccup," Astrid laughs, "you're the one who keeps complaining about how lame it is."

"It is lame," Hiccup concedes, "but not lame enough for Comic Sans. I dunno if anything is lame enough for Comic Sans."

"Well, if anyone is, it's you," she says, smiling sweetly at him. "Actually, you know what, I'm going to change your name on our project to Comic Sans."

"Go ahead," he shrugs. "As a matter of fact, I've decided to embrace the Comic Sans. Change the whole powerpoint to it."

"Ah, no," Astrid says, as she brings up their written essay and highlights his name, then presses the arrow on the font tab. Wow, she's actually doing it. Jerk. "I'd rather not embarrass myself in front of the entire class, thanks."

"We're already going to do that," he reminds her, because their project preparation has kind of… um, fallen to the wayside over the last few weeks. They get… distracted. Usually they're too busy making out or more to do school, but occasionally they're just goofing around and doing dumb stuff like comparing quote fonts just because. From what they can tell, Astrid has nice, loopy Freestyle Script and Hiccup's got frickin' Comic Sans.

"I'm just glad we all got that extension," Astrid says. Despite their class being an honors one, it turns out that all the science nerds in it are serious procrastinators, and no one had been particularly prepared to give their presentations when they were due. Hiccup remembers staring wide-eyed at Astrid, thinking oh, crap, I forgot that even existed, and her looking back at him in much the same way. Luckily, their teacher was a lenient one, and had adjusted the deadline to be 'before graduation,' because it's the only big assignment they have left for that class anyway. Hiccup and Astrid had been hoping to get theirs done tomorrow, but… well, it's not going too great.

"It's not like we're really using it, though," Hiccup muses. "We haven't actually worked on our project more at all."

Astrid grins and pulls him out of her desk chair so that she can kiss him properly. "Yeah, but we have a valid excuse," she says, once she's pulled away, and Hiccup blinks dazedly for a second before his brain catches back up to the conversation.

"Not for not finishing it before the deadline. We were almost completely done with it ages before it was due."

"Yeah, but then we got busy with… other stuff."

"Other stuff," Hiccup snorts. "I think my verbal eloquence is contagious."

Astrid throws her hands up mock-exasperatedly. "What do you want me to say? We were doing the do?"

Hiccup laughs. "Doing the do? We weren't even doing the do then!" Crap, he just used 'doing the do' in a sentence as a synonym for sex. Maybe Astrid's verbal eloquence in contagious.

"No, we were just trying to convince ourselves to wait to do the do. Which was perhaps more distracting than the do itself."

"Please stop saying the do," Hiccup whines, and Astrid offers him a shit-eating grin that's so reminiscent of Toothless's smug face that he almost has a panic attack. He'd known that letting the two of them hang out so much would be a bad idea; now he's just gone and gotten himself another terribly unsupportive companion in his life. Except that this one can actually talk, not just communicate scathing messages through certain looks, and that is not good. That is not good at all.

"I'll keep calling it the do as long as you want to keep doing the do," Astrid says firmly, and Hiccup rolls his eyes. If there's one thing Astrid's proven since they'd first… ahem, done the do a week ago, it's that she only has about as much self-control as he does in that department. Maybe less, he's not entirely sure.

They'd talked about it (through a lot of blushing and stammering) just a few days after they'd started dating, and the bottom line had been that they shouldn't do it yet. They were young, their relationship was still new and a little weird, and they were both just barely getting the hang of kissing. Sex would not only be unnecessary but a thoroughly bad idea, and they'd wait at least until they were in college before they got around to it. It'd sounded reasonable enough – why shouldn't they wait?

…And, plus, Hiccup hadn't really wanted Astrid to see his leg just then. He didn't tell her that, of course, but he's not going to pretend that it didn't contribute to his enthusiasm at the idea of putting off sex for a while.

In any case, they'd decided not to do it, but it'd been a lot easier to carry out in theory than in practice. Nearly every one of their make out sessions ended with his hands up Astrid's shirt and both of them panting like they'd just run a 22k marathon (or, in Hiccup's case, a 3k, he'd probably be dead by 22 kilometers) and more than once he'd had to pry her fingers away from the buttons of his pants, although with increasing hesitation every time. Eventually, the question had turned from 'why shouldn't we wait?' to 'why should we wait?', and they'd both come up pretty blank.

They'd decided to just go with it and see if an ideal moment came up, and if it did… well, they'd figure it out from there. Astrid had been very much in favor of doing it on Hiccup's 18th birthday, but both of their parents had been home then and, besides, they couldn't figure out whether they were supposed to go for February 28th or March 1st. Leap years. Hiccup had rather jokingly suggested that they wait until he turned 20 so that they could do it on his actual birthday, but then Astrid had rather not-jokingly threatened to punch him in the face and he'd shut up.

A week and a half ago, though, his parents had mentioned that they had decided not to take a trip for their 20-year anniversary, and Hiccup had put his one good foot down. They hadn't gone anywhere since he was fourteen and lost his leg, and he'd always been okay with that, but not celebrating an occasion as monumental as that one because of him had been going too far. He's eighteen, responsible, and, despite Astrid's constant teasing, he had not just been trying to get rid of them so that he could get laid. He'd just wanted them to have a good time. Eventually, they'd caved, and are currently away on a two-week vacation in Norway, despite Hiccup's advice to do otherwise; the freezing, barren terrain of the land would be such a tourist trap.

He really hadn't even made the connection that his parents being gone meant that his girlfriend could come over, but when he'd mentioned their trip in passing to said girlfriend, she sure had. Before he'd even known what was happening, Astrid had fed some spiel to her parents about a sleepover at Ruffnut's (they weren't even really friends, to the extent of his knowledge) and was suddenly kicking Toothless out of his room and double-checking the lock on the door. The rest had been history.

That first time had been… a little awkward, to put it mildly, but neither of them had been too surprised. Or disappointed, even – everything they did was a little weird, at first, and why should sex be any different? Hiccup had concentrated almost solely on keeping his bad leg from touching any part of Astrid's body, and Toothless could be heard scratching at the door the whole time, but the two of them had also held hands throughout the entirety of it and their timers had kept touching and they'd laughed a lot so, in the end, it really hadn't been all that bad. And it really hadn't been that bad when they'd done it again that night. Or the next morning. Or that afternoon. Or in the shower. Which had been very interesting, with three legs between the two of them, but it had eventually ended up working out.

The problem they're facing now is that once Hiccup's parents come back, they're not going to be able to do it nearly as often, and it's hard to say who'll die from depravation. That's a problem that they'll deal with when they come to it, though – for now, Hiccup's content to just be with Astrid (in whatever way) as often as he can and worry about everything else later.

Even if being with Astrid entails her making fun him for his quote being in Comic Sans.

"You know," Hiccup says, lying down on his girlfriend's bed and reading over the printed written portion of their speech, "I never got to tell you the carbon dating joke I wanted to use when we first got paired up."

"Oh, no, how tragic," Astrid responds sarcastically, climbing up next to him and putting her face so near his that her breath tickles his nose when she talks. So much for school. "What was it?"

"I'm glad I saved it, actually, because it works better now. Are you a carbon sample?"

She sighs. "I can tell this is going to suck, but no, why?"

"Because I'm dating you." Astrid groans and starts to roll away from him, but he reaches out and grabs her waist so that he can laughingly pull her back against him. "Good, right?" he poses, as he closes his eyes and buries his face in her shoulder. Astrid's shoulder is his favorite place in the world; it's a million times better than the best interactive science museum there is.

"Nope," she says, even though he can hear her smiling. Don't ask him how, it's a soulmate thing. "I don't even know why I put up with you."

"Because you love me?"

"No, that's not it."

"Because I help you with your homework?"

"Closer…"

"Because you secretly really do think I'm hilarious?"

"Definitely not."

He sighs. "Because I'm hot?"

"Bingo," Astrid laughs. "Actually, that reminds me of a science joke I never got around to telling you."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really. Nickel Cerium Boron Ununtrium," she says, and punctuates it with a light pinch to his ass. Hiccup laughs and swats her hand away.

"Ununtrium isn't an official periodic table element, I don't remember its sign."

"Take a guess, then." Hiccup thinks about it.

"I think it was Uut. So… Ni, Ce, B, Uut." He takes a minute to put it together into nice buut, then groans. "You didn't even spell that right."

"I'd like to see you do a better job."

"You could've gone for arsenic sulfur, that makes AsS."

Astrid rolls her eyes. "Yeah, but that one's too obvious. You had to think about the Ununtrium one."

"Only because it didn't make sense in context," Hiccup defends, even though she's totally right. That was a well executed, thought-provoking science pun. "But, fine, good joke."

"Wasn't a joke, babe," Astrid says, and his love of being addressed as babe by Astrid is almost overshadowed by the fact that she only calls him that because of his technically being only four years old. Almost. "You really do have a nice butt."

"Well, I guess that's good, then, since you're only with me for my looks." Astrid runs her fingers contemplatively through his hair for a moment (probably resisting braiding it because she knows he'll throw a fit) before tugging on it gently so that they make eye contact.

"Actually," she says, brushing the tip of his nose with her finger for no discernible reason and managing to make his breath hitch stupidly, "I lied about that."

"Oh?"

"Yeah."

"So you do secretly think I'm hilarious?"

"Not even a little bit," Astrid says firmly, and Hiccup deflates exaggeratedly. "But I do love you."

Hiccup's mind goes temporarily blank. They… have never said that before. Sure, they've implied it heavily, with looks and gestures and the fact that they've accepted the idea of them being each other's soulmates, but they haven't… they haven't just come out and said it yet. It takes him a moment to wrap his mind around the concept that three words could make him so deliriously happy, but he snaps out of it quite quickly and smiles back at her.

"I love you, too," he tells her, and kisses her chastely before wrapping his arms more securely around her and cuddling her properly. There have been a lot of times over the last six weeks when words have been necessary – discussing whether or not they're really soulmates (and whether or not they really care), brainstorming ideas on how to best tell their parents about them, and, just a few days ago, laying out all their insecurities about themselves on the table – but right now isn't one of those times. This is one of those times where they just need to lie there and silently take each other in.

And sometimes… sometimes, the gods get things wrong. The gods do shitty things. The gods created syphilis and loneliness and people that grew up to become bad singers who tortured the ears of millions. Near the beginning of time, the gods tore away humans from their other halves as a repercussion for their transgressions, and thousands of years later, the gods made a little boy miserable by making him think he'd never find his soulmate.

But the gods also made Ernest Duchesne so that he could create penicillin and discover antibiotics. They also gave the world headphones so that innocent bystanders wouldn't have to listen to the bad music of their neighbors. They also took pity on the human halves they separated and gave them timers to help them find one another again, and they also gave a little boy a happy ending.

So, yeah. The gods screw things up. The gods can be jerks. But maybe, also, when the mood strikes them, the gods make things right. Maybe, occasionally, they fix their mistakes. Maybe they realize there's a line and that they've crossed it and then they work to put things back into the light.

And maybe, Hiccup thinks, as he pointedly ignores the project waiting for them on the desk and wonders if Astrid's parents will mind him crashing at their place tonight, maybe the gods don't hate him too much after all.

… … …

 _Aaand it's done! Wow I finished it! I'm a very ADHD writer and I can't really do continuous stories because my mind likes to hop around too much but this was pretty fun! Sorry this last chapter was lame and short and pointless, I just wanted a lil epilogue to mess around with :p and if I ever make a sequel/oneshots in the future like u guys seem to want, this'll probably come into play._

 _Thanks so so much for reading and reviewing you guys (ifthisisitcrazy u r ridic awesome)! This thing ended up being over double the length I wanted (IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE 22K SOBS) and I put a fair amount of time into it so if you read this far, u think you could drop me a review just this one last time? To tell me what you thought of the story, the puns, what I could do better, etc. Even 'jolly good' or 'not jolly good' would be awesome! love you guys! xo Jolly_


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